


Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Universe

by ayyyy (RosaAquafire)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: But not before Jake acts like an idiot, Dirk too, F/F, Godstuck, M/M, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Secondary Davekat - Freeform, Secondary Roxygen - Freeform, Secondary rosemary, Self-Loathing, Tertiary Scourgecest, brain ghost mediator, introvert jake, it's not sexy yet, it's pretty sexy at this poin t, okay it got moderately sexy now, rated for the future, some ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 14:16:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7717966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosaAquafire/pseuds/ayyyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know that game where you offer someone something amazing but then add a deal-breaking caveat? Like, "You're a billionare! But you have to donate half to your least favourite politician."</p><p>Well, how's this for a good one?</p><p>You walk through a door and become an all powerful god in a newborn universe!</p><p>But you carry all of your emotional baggage with you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The God of Hope has lost all hope

_It is said that after the Goddess of Space set a blue marble in the vast expanse of nothingness and hung the seven moons to dance around it, the Gods took their rest._

_The earth still roiled with angry oceans, which covered its surface from pole to pole. There was work and more left to be done. But lighting suns and kindling stars and spinning galaxies can take a toll even on the creators themselves. They retired to the moons, and one by one, they fell into a deep sleep._

_All but two._

_The Prince of Souls could not find peace, because Hope had slipped away while reality had been spun into place. And what rest is there for a heart without hope?_

***

Jake snaps awake from the kind of nightmare that seems so real it could shiver your bones. He pants, eyes tightly closed, and is afraid to open his eyes.

He's afraid that still he'll be caught in the horror of the space that had enveloped them when they stepped through the door, before Grandma had raised her arms and the stars had roared to life. Or perhaps that he'll still be locked in hair-raising, fighting-for-his-blinking-life combat with a small army of confusing green men. Or will he find himself huddled on a mysterious platform, surrounded by strangers he doesn't know and friends he's disappointed? Will he be in a Derse prison, watching as a Jane he doesn't recognize strikes down a Roxy he does? Will he be aching, body and soul, at Prospit's core, wishing he hadn't ruined every single thing in his freaking life by being such a selfish fucking _idiot_?

Or will he just be laying in the grass on LOMAX, resting in the shade of one of the great henges, with another series of gut-wrenching, confusing, frustrating, guilt-inducing text messages from Dirk blinking on his phone?

He blinks his eyes open.

The last one, it looks like.

Dew drops cling to his body as he pulls himself to a sitting position. His keister is pretty darned wet, and he squirms uncomfortably as he fishes for his telephone. His heart pounds in his throat. Messages from Dirk are waiting, definitely. Not the ones his half-asleep mind have conjured, not another stab of shame for having left for LOMAX a week ago without any warning, but messages nevertheless. A followup to their brief reunion on the victory pad, where Dirk hadn't met his eyes and Jake hadn't known what to say and Dirk had rubbed the back of his neck and Jake had cleared his throat.

Jake had wanted to say: _I didn't mean for things to happen the way they did. Everything just got away from me and I got so darned balled up flipping my gourd about little things and I should have talked to you, I could have avoided all of this, I didn't really want you to leave me._

But all he'd actually managed to say was: _I'm really glad you're all on the up and up, Dirk._

And Dirk had actually looked at him, but he'd been wearing those infernal goshdamned shades, and Jake hadn't been able to even see his eyes, much less read them, before he'd looked away again. _Same._

It wasn't the conversation he wanted to have. But it was a lot simpler and he was a lot less likely to make a frigging mess of it, and... and ultimately, he thinks, now, with his butt wet from morning dew in the centre of a newborn universe, ultimately maybe it was the best way it could have gone.

Jesus fucking knows that if he's given half a chance, he'll just break hearts and make a mess of everything all over again.

It's better this way.

And it's for this reason that when his phone is empty of any telltale orange lettering, Jake breathes out deeply and sinks back down into the grass.

Better this way.

No messages from Roxy or Jane, either -- just as well, right? Jane... god, he can't even think about Jane, not with the way he'd treated her, and then the way she'd treated _him_ , red pupils staring at him from soulless black eyes, describing a terrifying future for him, taunting him, fingers on his chin, turning his head from side to side, sizing him up like he was a horse on the auction block.

And Roxy, dying. Roxy, the only person he hadn't completely torn to shreds, falling, blood spreading across the floor, eyes dulling, while he just cowered. A Page of Hope can do anything, but Jake English can't manage a single thing.

None of his friends are reaching out to him, and that's... for the best, isn't it?

It's for the best.

But there is _one_ chat window open.

\-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] --  
  
GG: hiiiiii :)  
GG: this is jake, right??  
GG: jane gave me your screen name!  
GG: heehee i actually have noooo idea if these messages are even getting to you. it doesn't seem like they should, right? because i mean this is a brand new universe! i lit up the stars like I was conducting a choir, wow!!  
GG: but a messaging program seems like the sort of thing thatd need an infrastructure??  
GG: my grandpa could definitely figure this out  
GG: which means...  
GG: maybe you could, too??  
GG: i dont know but i cant wait to talk more!!  
GG: its been forever since i got a letter from you and i want to hear whats been going on!  
GG: so much has happened!  
GG: i mean... for both of us!!  
GG: you should text me :D  
GG: okay?  
GG: like  
GG: ASAP!!  
GG: i'll be waiting!  
  
\-- gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering golgothasTerror [GT] --

Jake runs a hand through his hair. It feels unexpectedly clean. It's been a week since he stood under the hot water of Dirk's shower, which always smelled faintly like metal, but he's a god now. Do gods not get greasy hair? Does _becoming _a god just give you a shower, along with the complimentary close shave?__

__It's easier to think about what his life means now than it is to look down at his phone and think about how simple it would be to fuck everything up and ruin Jade's life, too._ _

__"Yeah," a familiar voice says, right at his ear. "But you should really say something. I mean, not responding to messages is kind of what got you fucked up in the first place, right?"_ _

__For a second, just this one beautiful second, Jake thinks that it's Dirk. Dirk needed to talk to him, Dirk couldn't let things lay where they were, Dirk had flown through the empty, oxygen-starved void of a squalling, newborn universe to talk to him, to work this out, to make it all right. He turns, heart in his mouth, and everything he wants to say is experiencing a hell of a traffic jam in his throat._ _

__But it's not Dirk. It's just a ghost._ _

__"You're still here," Jake says, surprised._ _

__"Wow." Brain Ghost Dirk snorts, rolling his eyes and looking away._ _

__"Oh, don't give me that!" Jake retorts. He hates that he feels guilty for hurting a brain ghost's feelings. "I'm not -- I just thought you'd be gone!"_ _

__"Eh, well. I was here before the game. I'll be here after. As long as there's a Prince of Heart and Page of Hope to keep me ticking, I guess." He's still wearing his Prince of Heart get-up, and because it's _not_ really Dirk, because it's just the ghost, Jake lets himself admire. Freckled forearms, narrow waist, long slender legs sheathed in those white tights. How can Dirk be so far away and so close? How can a memory be so live-wire vivid while the physical reality is completely out of reach? How can you screw up a relationship with someone so bad when your fingers and mouth have touched every part of their body?_ _

__The ghost turns and gives him a raised-eyebrows, bemused sort of look. "Damn, son," he says, shaking his head. " _Really?_ "_ _

__Jake looks away, flushing. "Put a friggin' sock in it," he blurts, and climbs to his feet, walking a few steps away from where the ghost sits. He goes to shove his hands into his pockets, but there are no pockets because he's wearing sunny yellow briefs instead of a respectable pair of shorts._ _

__He's hyper-aware of the ghost's eyes on him. He feels the underpants riding up a bit in back so that's got to be a focal point. Brain Ghost Dirk is still a Dirk, after all. He looks up at the sky, instead. The view from LOMAX has always been a black expanse swirling with violet xenon clouds. He'd known the rest of the session was out there: the golden towers of Prospit, the distant shadow of Derse, their empty, inert Skaia, where no battle raged at all. But all of that had been hidden behind a veil, and the sky had always been eerily (comfortingly?) empty._ _

__And now? The Earth hangs above him._ _

__It's his Earth. More specifically, it's _Dirk's_ earth, Roxy's earth. The Waterworld they grew up in, the wrecked and wasted result of the Condesce's efforts, a place where civilization hasn't had a foothold for centuries. It's a blue ball covered in water and cloud without a speck of brown or green. They're supposed to go there, create life, be gods, _real_ gods, and no one even knows how to make an island they can live on._ _

__And there's the sun._ _

__"Everything's different. Every _one_ is different." the ghost says behind him, echoing the direction of his thoughts. "And everything's still the exact fucking same."_ _

__Jake sighs. He drags a hand over his face. It's just too darned fucking _weird_ , looking at an Earth centuries removed from the one he left, from the planet he'd left it for, which is now a moon, all illuminated by a sun that his grandma (daughter? friend?) had kindled, nuclear fission happening before his eyes._ _

__He doesn't understand how she did it, but he maybe _feels_ how. He feels the way the very fabric of this world responds to him, like every blade of grass quivers, bowing down, awaiting his command. But he doesn't know how to give commands. He doesn't know what commands to give._ _

__How can you be god when you're still the same stupid, confused kid?_ _

__He's still holding his phone._ _

__"You should really talk to her," the ghost repeats himself._ _

__"I don't think so," Jake says. He pages through the messages again. Jade seems so happy and excited. She wants to connect, to pick up where they'd left off. She doesn't know him, not really. She knows the Jake English he'd always believed in, the way someone believes in frigging Santa Claus. A fake-ass dude who was cool and charming and upbeat and friendly. Someone basically nothing like him. "Zounds, she's got piles to do! And friends to spare. She doesn't need me." His mouth twists. "In fact, she's two scoops of better off without me, if you want the straight dick."_ _

__"I do," Brain Ghost Dirk says beside him, dry as the deserts on LOPAN. "I definitely do want the straight dick."_ _

__"Oh, ball it up and throw it in the bin!" Jake retorts, flushing. He didn't mean to make an innuendo. But Dirk would know, and because Dirk would know, the ghost knows, and because the ghost knows, Jake knows. It's this frustrating paradoxical mobius loop that is right in the right tone for how things always were with him and Dirk._ _

__He takes a hearty step away from the ghost, and it watches him. Or at least, he thinks it does. Hell and high water, you'd think that if you're creating a ghost version of an inscrutable suitor, you'd at least dream him up without those blasted shades!_ _

__Jake takes a deep breath. Lets it out. The ghost is definitely watching him. "Why are you even here?" he demands, balling up his fists._ _

__The ghost raises a hand to rub the back of his neck, an echo of the gesture Dirk had made on the platform. "Not sure," it says. "Except that judging by what I know about my weird, weird, existence, I pretty much can't just drop by uninvited?"_ _

__"So you want me to crab to having tossed you an RSVP?"_ _

__"Maybe a subconscious one?"_ _

__Jake goes to snap back something quick and off the cuff, but, instead, he swallows it down and says nothing. It's confusing, dealing with Brain Ghost Dirk. The question of what he actually _is_ makes everything so..._ _

__"Yeah," the ghost agrees. "Tell me about it, dude. I mean, how do you think I feel? But seriously. You should at least write to say that you're busy, or going through some shit, or just that you don't want to see her. Isn't saying nothing at all kind of what fucked everything up with me?"_ _

__Yeah. And Jake remembers, huddled up in the core of Prospit's royal crypt, telling himself that he'd never just leave someone hanging ever again._ _

__"What if I hurt her feelings?"_ _

__"Look, I know you're not this stupid. Like, I _literally _know it because I'm kind of in your brain. What's gonna hurt her feelings more, you saying you don't want to hang out or you just ignoring her?"___ _

____"Why are you here?" Jake asks again._ _ _ _

____"How about you tell me?" the ghost shoots back._ _ _ _

____And maybe he kind of _does_ know why._ _ _ _

______ \-- golgothasTerror [GT] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --  
  
GT: Hi jade.  
GT: I dont know if im gonna be able to gab at you today.  
GG: aaaww.  
  


____The immediate response surprises him. He feels a low key sense of panic in his chest._ _ _ _

________ GG: welll thats okay i guess!  
GG: everyone is so tired except me so its not like youre missing anything  
GG: but im wide awake and so so so tired of resting and i really just want to get out there and start doing stuff!! know what i mean?  
  


____In truth? Yeah. Yeah, he sure does. Nothing in the world makes him feel better the way that _moving_ does, the way that _action_ does. He pauses with his fingers over the keys_ _ _ _

____"Just be honest," suggests the ghost._ _ _ _

____ GT: Oh boy howdy grandma do i EVER! _ _ _ _

____"Wow. Okay, that maybe more honesty than I was expecting. Cool it, dude, you sound fake as shit right now."_ _ _ _

____"Pipe down over there, will you? I sure could do without you bumping your gums!"_ _ _ _

________ GT: The real dope is you cant ever friggin IMAGINE just how bad it was in our session.  
GT: Nothing to do just a whole lot of waiting until you lot finally showed yourselves.  
GT: Uh though now that im thinking about it you were all along on a spaceboat for three years after all your friends kicked the old bucket?  
GT: So maybe you can imagine haha.  
GG: yeah... :(  
GG: i was too busy being lonely to be bored though so i just slept a whole lot.  
GG: honestly i feel like ive been sleeping forever!! thats why i really want to just get out there and start doing things! brainstorming how were going to get the earth inhabitable and stuff!  
GG: or how this new universe even works! like are universal constants even consistent between the frog we came from and the frog we made? does the void of space have the same density and does light have the same maximum travelling speed?  
GG: ooh i bet now that i control all space i can figure out how to test if dark matter is actually real!  
GT: Gee whiz there jade that sure sounds like a quixotic sorta to-do list for your first day on the job!  
GG: heehee youre probably right :)  
GG: i keep getting carried away!!  
GG: honestly though id really rather start just talking instead. i havent had a chance to talk to you at all and its been sooo long!  
GT: I reckon it has been now.  
GT: Especially on your side!  
GT: From my reckoning its only been a hop skip jump of six months since i sent my last letter off to the time capsule.  
GG: oh thats right!  
GG: but from my perspective it's been three years!!  
GT: Now youre on the trolley!  
GG: these damn temporal shenanigans! they just confuse us spacey girls ;)  
GG: see why im so eager now??  
GG: its been sooo crazy actually meeting everyone you talked about in your letters. especially jane since shes kind of my mom?? and youre kind of my dad heehee  
GG: ive known that for three years too but its still weird to think about  
GG: its just so crazy that were kind of... all a family you know?  
GG: roxy is super cool and smart just like you said!!  
GG: shes really into science too! but mostly biology...  
GG: anyway she reminds me sooo much of dave sometimes!   
GG: and dirk is so much like rose!  
  


____Jake's heart squeezes._ _ _ _

________ GT: Dirks there? And youre talking to him?  
GG: ohhh no haha  
GG: to either of those questions!  
GG: hes kind of intimidating isnt he?  
GT: He can seem it and then some! But hes really not nearly such a big ole bruno as he seems once you get to know him. He  
  


____Jake stops typing. The cursor blinks up at him, accusatory. He finds himself trapped halfway through an explanation of what a great person Dirk is, how he can be overbearing and confusing and intense but then, at the same time, so affectionate and funny and supportive and actually just a big old dork and really quite lovely._ _ _ _

____He one hundred percent believes that's all true, as true as it ever was. But saying it, to Jade, that's just inviting her into his madness. Two shakes of a dog's tail and he'll be dumping his problems on her like he did with Jane. Unloading on her while she's going through enough of her own stuff, like Roxy._ _ _ _

____"The right way to handle this, logically," the ghost says, "is to tell her that you'd love to spend the day, meet up somewhere, do a lot of normal stuff, and then slip in some confiding about Dirk. This is how normal people handle their problems."_ _ _ _

____"I can't," Jake says. "I can't."_ _ _ _

____He deletes the message he was working on._ _ _ _

________ GT: Jade this all sounds awfully tempting but i guess im pretty darn fucking beat too.  
GT: Those green blokes took a lot out of me!  
GT: I think its better if i just spend the day out here decompressing. And maybe tomorrow too.  
GG: oh...  
GG: are you sure?  
GT: Yessiree bob!  
  


____"You were enjoying that conversation." Brain Ghost Dirk sounds so infuriatingly logical._ _ _ _

____"It's better this way," Jake murmurs._ _ _ _

____ GG: well okay then  
GG: the day after! ill message you first thing! _ _ _ _

____Its his instinct to say no, don't go, I'm sorry. It clatters up against something deeper, this bone-weariness at having to fend her off again in another 48 hours. What's his plan here, really? She's going to manage to get close to him eventually, because he wants it, too. And then he'll resent her and be tired of her and want her gone and in the end, he'll hurt her like he hurts everybody._ _ _ _

____He captachlogues the phone, because he still doesn't have any pants, and he looks back up at the sky._ _ _ _

____"Just talk to her now," the ghost reasons. "Two days from now is going to be just like today, only more awkward because of the compounding guilt effect. You _know_ it's the truth, dude. You've _done_ this before."_ _ _ _

____"You think you're so friggin brilliant."_ _ _ _

____" _You_ think I'm so friggin brilliant, apparently. You made me this way, dude."_ _ _ _

____"Then I'm gonna take a stab at it and say that you think you've got some choice idea that's way better?"_ _ _ _

____"Well, frankly, fuckin' _anything_ is better. But specifically, you should probably just say something along the lines of yo, Jade, I'm weird with people and a bunch of really bad shit went down just before you got to the session and I haven't worked through it all yet. Then just _talk to her_ like a human until something shakes out."_ _ _ _

____The ghost is right. The ghost is, infuriatingly, _almost always right_. The ghost knows things it shouldn't know, things from Dirk's side, things from his side. If he can trust anyone, he can trust the ghost._ _ _ _

____But trusting Brain Ghost Dirk, in this case, means trusting himself. And if there's anyone he _can't_ trust, well._ _ _ _

____It may have blind-sided him six months ago, after a lifetime without human contact, without any frame of reference for what it would be like. But today? Today, Jake English knows what he is._ _ _ _

____He looks up at the blue marble of Earth. What will it be, in a year? Fifty years? A thousand years? A _million?_ The thing is, they're gods. They'll never grow old and they'll never die. The mistakes he makes today, or two days from now, or next week... they won't go away. Not ever. Jake English and his inability to be a good, _normal_ person with friends and relationships and connections will become a permanent friggin fixture of this new reality._ _ _ _

_____It'll all be better off if I scram. That's the honest truth._ _ _ _ _

____"Hey," the ghost says, trepidation in his voice. "What the fuck does _scram_ mean, here, in this case? Yo. Come on. Be cool, bro."_ _ _ _

____Jake turns around and the ghost is standing in front of him. He's got his arms stretched out to either side like he's barring Jake's way or something. Or like he's trying to fly off._ _ _ _

____"Don't be stupid," the ghost pleads. "You think they aren't going to try and find you? Where the fuck are you even going to go? Do you really fucking think this is what they want -- what _you_ want?"_ _ _ _

____"It's a big universe," Jake says, and he walks through Brain Ghost Dirk. His skin tingles all over, and he shivers. "And I like being alone."_ _ _ _


	2. The God of Hearts is heartbroken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I was like oh yeah I'm going to update this once a day every day for a week. God let's all go back to those halcyon days and dream of being so naive and full of hope. Those were truly the best of times.
> 
> I still hope to have this done in two weeks, three at the most for the whole thing. We'll see.

Dirk breaks the surface like a fish. Old instincts come back like they never left, and as he treads water, he whips his hair, sending an arc of droplets flying. They catch the setting sun like diamonds, and the really strange thing in that moment is how it feels like nothing has changed. Houston sleeps beneath him like the ruins of the Titanic, seagulls cry as they circle overhead, and Dirk might as well be the only human in the world.

But when he turns himself about, there's no apartment crouching atop metal framework. It's just ocean, as far as he can see. His home has been dragged to another planet, and then slagged and sucked into a black hole. It is, all things considered, pretty much the most _thorough death_ a home has ever had.

He kicks up so that his feet float to the surface. He spreads his arms to either side. The newborn sun is warm on his face and he closes his eyes.

The really strange thing, when he pulls the situation apart piece by piece to get a good look at the beating heart of it, is that things really _haven't_ changed in a whole lot of ways. Chronologically speaking, the ocean he's adrift in is the very same one he left. He'd dove deep, rediscovered troves that he'd tucked away into secure areas. Most of the structures he'd marked as being close to losing their structural soundness were still standing. None of his frequent haunts had grown new mussels or become infested with barnacles. Pressed, Dirk would estimate that perhaps three weeks had passed for earth, where six months and an entire lifetime had passed for him.

His home is gone. He can dive down, find the very place where the supports of his apartment are cut off as if with a blowtorch, and yet everything surrounding it is the same. It seems like a metaphor for everything. For his entire life.

They're sitting in the centre of a universe that didn't exist two days ago, but they're starting with the same old planet. The sun is new, but Jade had made it cook to just the right dimensions, heat, location, chemical composition, and for all intents, it's the cloned, newborn twin of the yellow star they left behind. The game is over, and yet they carried the playing fields with them, eight planets (minus his, because _of course_ his was the one that ate it) carried through a mystical doorway and now spinning as moons to the same earth.

He'd had Jake. He'd held him, kissed him, felt him, loved him. It had all been there, right in front of him, his to make happen or fuck up. Every fucking dream he'd ever had come true. And fuck up he had. Because of course he had.

And so he's floating on his back in the same ocean, on the same planet, in the same place, and he's pining for Jake fucking English.

It doesn't really feel like a brand new shot at life.

But some things are different. Like the fact that he doesn't need to hold his breath when he dives. A lifetime of training himself up to ten minutes, to go deep and forage for supplies, and now if he concentrates and wills himself slightly _sideways_ , there's no need. It isn't like he's breathing underwater. It's that he doesn't need to breathe at all. Neither Just nor Heroic deaths await him for flying through the void of space. Instead, it's no death at all.

Not God Tier. Not anymore. Just god, now.

And maybe that's the strangest thing of all.

He's pretty sure he'll never get tired treading water out here -- a dude who doesn't need to breathe probably also doesn't need to rest -- but he suddenly itches for home. Barring that, because home is _still_ slag in a black hole somewhere, an island, a rocky outcropping, something. Somewhere to stretch out, bake under the sun.

Something in him seems to exert control, and for a moment it all seems pretty fuckin' clear. He can just reach down, find the bedrock under one of the towering high rises just beneath the surface, and raise it up. Every part of this world, of this _universe_ , it all answers to his call.

But when he tries, when he actually concentrates and reaches out, it's like... forgetting how to blink, or breathe. Like trying to run a marathon without knowing how to walk, first. Sighing, he just lets himself rise up into the air, water dripping from his body. This whole thing was a bad idea, a desperate attempt to reclaim something that's gone.

Even in his own head, he can't pretend he isn't thinking about Jake.

The sun really is bright. He fetches his shades from his sylladex, sliding them onto his face. He gazes up at the yellow ball. Can he go blind? Probably not. He still _feels_ like he can, like he shouldn't gaze directly at it, but maybe it just requires that bit of concentration to get that slightly _sideways_ feeling, and then he'll have indestructible retinas. Fuck yeah. Worth all the heartbreak, for sure.

He thinks about pestering Jake. Something... chill. Cool. Not needy, not whiney, not clingy, just cool. Yo, English. How's divinity? But there's already a flashing chat window in his shades. He brings it up, holding his arms akimbo so the water drips off him, back into the endless ocean. It's not Jake.

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] has begun pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

TG: yo  
TG: whats crackin  
TG: uh  
TG: so  
TG: i might have ruined your fuckin day bro sorry in advance about this  
TG: but  
TG: i let slip that you were headed down to scope out the area around your old house and shit  
TG: to uh  
TG: probably the worst person imaginable

Dirk's heart thuds against his ribs.

TT: Jake.  
TT: Jake's coming here?  
TG: what  
TG: oh  
TG: fuck  
TG: no  
TG: whew  
TG: second worst at the absolute most balls then  
TG: i uh definitely havent seen jake since jade LIT THE FUCKING SUN what the actual shit is going on in my life  
TG: sometimes its just like  
TG: well hella at least now it cant get weirder  
TG: weve reached peak maximum weird  
TG: oh john got powers to rewrite the timeline and im gay dating a literal space alien and i cut my fatherbrothers fucking head off and now were gods? cool that must be as weird as its gonna get  
TG: oh no  
TG: you aint seen nothing yet son  
TG: girl you used to dig just lit a goddamn fucking SUN with her MIND  
TG: stay tuned to see how much weirder it can get  
TT: Heh.  
TT: Yeah.  
TT: If Jake shows up, can you throw me a message?

And then what? Dirk... sends him a pathetic, desperate message that is absolutely _not_ at all cool? Dirk... blasts up through the atmosphere, arms outstretched, diving into Jake's waiting arms? Yeah, no. Nothing's changed. He's still fucked everything up.

TG: uhhh yeah for sure  
TG: but for real bro id focus on like preparing your anus cause youve got a bogey coming your way  
TG: two bogies  
TG: (its rose)  
TG: (and kanaya)  
TT: Oh.  
TG: hope youve got pants on  
TT: I don't, actually. I just assumed I wouldn't be interrupted and I'm kind of used to being the last man on earth and shit so I've never bothered with trunks.  
TG: really  
TT: Yep. Don't worry, I'll spare a thought and get decent before the bogies show.  
TG: damn tho  
TG: like  
TG: but then your business is just.... flopping around... for sharks to bite...  
TG: brave dude

Despite himself, Dirk smiles. Roxy, he thinks. Sometimes Dave is so much like Roxy it's fucking weird to think about. Murals and tablets on LOTAK made it clear months ago that it's _him_ who's the daddy, here, not the man he always thought of as his troll-style ancestor. But actually talking to the real version of this person has driven it home. It's the kids Roxy always wanted, the two of them repopulating the earth. Somehow, some glitch in Paradox Space was able to let him give that to her, after all.

Talking to Dave is cool. It's sobering and wild and kind of makes his head spin, sometimes, but it's fucking neat.

Talking to Rose, on the other hand...

A shadow passes over him and he looks up.

Yeah, sup. Bogeys at Z-Axis o'clock. He's glad that he spared the thought to adjust his god tier presentation. Less glad that apparently that thought came up with a euro-style speedo-brief that hugs the ass he doesn't have? Cool, subconscious, cool. What a fucking asshole that guy is.

Rose -- _his daughter, it's so fucking weird, he can see it in her cheekbones, her chin, her nose, holy fuck --_ floats lazily above him with the troll girl she's mad over. She clearly spent a lot more time designing what her beachwear should look like. She's wearing a stylish one-piece with a flowing skirt that adds some va-va-voom to her Golden Age of Hollywood style curves. Or at least, he assumes it does. It's all intellectual to him.

"Father," she says primly, and he winces. "I like your choices of intimates. Very... intimate."

"Is this exchange _intentionally_ Freudian?" Kanaya wears a jade green two-piece that shows off her long, slender figure. Her large phosphorescent eyes are downright guileless, which Dirk has already figured out is absolutely an illusion, because she is _full_ of guile.

"Fully intentional," Rose says.

"Excellent, I was only checking." Kanaya nods.

Dirk sighs. "Are you here to swim, or what?"

"Kanaya needs to learn," Rose says, shooting a glance over at her girlfriend.

"Land-dwelling trolls avoid the water," Kanaya explains. "If we don't, we are often set upon by aquatic princes or their vicious lusii. With this new, maritime frontier before us, it seemed wise to take the time."

Dirk had always assumed that all trolls were amphibious like Her Royal Fucking Highness, but this _does_ explain why the ones he now shares a pantheon with have delicately pointed ears instead of fins and lack the gills that the Condescension would often flare to unsettle humans. He's eternally grateful for the difference, in all honesty. He's not sure he could ever look at them without feeling his gorge rise if they resembled the alien Queen who'd destroyed humanity and any chance at him having a normal life.

"See?" Rose is saying innocently, and Dirk refocuses his attention. "My presence is entirely within the realm of the plausible."

"Right," Dirk says. "And it's just a coincidence that despite the entire _globe_ being ocean, you just happened to choose this spot."

"I always wanted to visit Texas," she responds primly with one delicately raised eyebrow. He recognizes the gesture, because it's one of his. Fuck, that's amazing. Fuck, that's weird. "Dave made it sound so pleasant."

With that, she tucks her knees up against her rounded belly, pinches her nose, closes her eyes, and drops the two metres between sky and sea. Dirk raises his arm to ward off splashed water as she cannonballs through the surface. Kanaya's eyes are very wide.

For a moment, the waves just sway on. With nothing to break them, they're high enough to touch the tips of Dirk's toes in places, and then dip low enough to be a pretty fuckin' precipitous drop. It's silly to worry for a second, to think -- shit, can _Rose_ swim? Because just like him, Rose is a god, now.

And just like that, she breaks the surface. She gasps for air -- didn't bother with invoking divinity, he supposes -- and she's spitting and making faces around the thick, honey-blonde veil in her face. Hah. She doesn't know how to whip it off.

"Rose?" Kanaya asks, voice strained. She sounds like she's trying real hard not to be concerned.

"It's... salty!" Rose sputters, blind and dog-paddling madly.

And Dirk -- laughs.

Just a little, a rumble in his chest. "Looks like my dumbass _daughter_ doesn't know ocean swimming," he drawls. "Should have brought you up better."

And there's a whole lot of fucking up shit, just like -- so much fucked up shit. Everything is so fucking weird and this is his actual child by every genetic and logical metric and she doesn't know what the ocean tastes like. Every beat of his heart goes _jake, jake, jake_ , but maybe it's all as simple as that he's just still so fucking lonely.

Rose is here, his _daughter_ (?!) and her weird troll girlfriend and like, isn't what he really wants just to share... _something_ with someone?

Before long, Kanaya is swimming. It seems to come naturally to her, after her natural inclination to flail around and act like an undignified kid in waterwings is assuaged. Dirk is pretty sure that witnessing an undignified version of Kanaya Maryam is some _rare shit_ , so he makes sure to take mental pictures and remember it clearly. Like, a thousand years from now when he needs to embarrass his weird, weird fucking family at some sort of... reunion? (fuck, the future is weird, how can anything be more infinitely fucking weird than the present), he's going to want to be able to whip this one out.

Maybe it's just something with Space players. Or maybe there's some bullshit rule about like, last in, first out or something, like the last person to get access to full classpect powers becomes fucking classpect Jesus or what. But when they're exhausted and waterlogged and Rose is holding up hands to show off her wrinkled skin, Kanaya's eyes go unfocused, she lists to one side in the water, and before Rose (and Dirk) can even start panicking, there's this absolutely insane grinding noise, steel and stone rubbing off on each other, both of them panting and groaning ( _jake_ ), and about quarter-metre of some other high-rise climbs out of the water. Rose is swimming to Kanaya, who is lolling and dipping beneath the waves.

It's hard not to think about how stupid it is to be worried. Just? Heroic? Neither, Kanaya will be fine even if she doesn't god-out and drowns. But they're not just gods, they're also humans, and it's pure instinct that makes Dirk dive and help Rose get Kanaya up onto the platform she's created.

"Was this really necessary?" Rose scolds, with Kanaya's head in her lap.

Kanaya smiles. She has an extremely beautiful smile, despite or maybe even because of the vampire fangs. "It's very good practice, Rose."

"You oughta get her back to LOLAR," Dirk says, his chest a bit tight because they're paired off, they have each other, and obviously the next step is them going off and leaving him here. They are a unit and he is an outsider. It's full on petty fucking nonsense, considering.

But Rose gives him _A Look,_ and Kanaya's smile becomes something of a grin. "I think it would be very silly for me to move the earth just to leave. No, I want to rest under this new Earth sun. I like it. It's very bright."

"Something tells me that Karkat and Terezi will disagree with that being a point in its favour." Rose's fingers glide through Kanaya's hair, avoiding the horns. The analytical part of Dirk's brain kicks into life, noting the way Kanaya's curls have already dried and don't seem to have that crusty salt feeling he's already squirming over. What's troll hair made of? What does it feel like? Meanwhile, the other part of him, the part he kind of hates, is watching the tenderness of Rose's gesture like a starving man watching someone eat. 

_(jake.)_

"Well," Dirk says, to say something. "It's nice you're staying." It comes out like, fucking painfully sincere. He winces. "I just mean --"

"I know what you mean," Rose says, in that prim and poised and oddly intense tone of voice that doesn't remind him of either himself _or_ Roxy. Rox is always rambling without purpose or plan, dallying with one idea and then heading to the next when it catches her attention. And as for him... Dirk honestly just... tries to sound, you know. Chill? Rose has no chill. 

"Yeah, sorry." He isn't sure how to deal with someone without chill. Rose kind of speaks the way that he wishes he _could_. Self-assured, confident, and really not even a little bit worried about what anybody else thinks of her.

Something tells him Jake wouldn't have bolted at the first fucking lull in the glory of creation if he could pull that off. Instead of his own well-cultivated whiney bitch shebang.

One of Rose's blonde eyebrows climbs. "Apologies aren't exactly necessary. Or are you demonstrating proper manners for your errant child?"

"Fuck," Dirk moan-growls, turning his face away. He hates that redheads don't get the luxury of hiding a blush. It's genetically unfair, come the fuck on. He isn't bashful or embarrassed, he's just... weirded out.

_What even is family?_

Kanaya chuckles. Whatever family is, she's a part of it. She and Karkat, too. How does it all work? How do these pieces fit together? Where does it leave him when these grown not-children he never wanted or asked for are basically married and he's got... a crush that he's probably going to nurse for eternity? 

Dirk wishes he was _capable_ of just arranging the puzzle, of bringing all these shattered (splintered, probably) bits together, but he just keeps getting images of jagged edges that are going to cut him to ribbons.

"It does seem strange, however," Rose is saying, with this sort of fake-wondering sort of tone. Like, the tone that a dog owner uses when there's a steaming turd in the middle of the floor and the dog is huddled in the corner and the owner is going _hm, I just wonder who left this here._ Doggie mind games, etc. "It's clear enough that you're struggling with the details of a break-up, but you seem miserable by yourself, and Dave is essentially standing on the sidelines, rocking on his heels, waiting for the real relationship with you to start?"

Wow, okay. They're just... going there? Rose is carefully not looking at him, which is the complete opposite of when she's actually ribbing him. And Kanaya is blinking those big, phosphorescent eyes at him curiously. He feels for all the world as though he's being interrogated by two cats. Good cat, bad cat. Or more like. Nosy cat and cat pretending to be cool.

He's not sure what inspires him to some honesty. But he rolls back onto his heels and stands up. The sun feels nice on his body. The rest of him feels pretty shitty. "The last thing Dave needs is me around him," he says. "He thinks he's ready for a relationship with me and he's just fucking not. Asking him to look at me and not see that fucking asshole who raised him is too insensitive for even a stone cold motherfucker like me."

"That seems like the sort of thing Dave might want to decide for himself."

"I'm pretty firmly of the belief that sometimes, people aren't equipped to make good choices on their own behalf. And you've got to be the better man and just... leave things be."

Rose glanced up at him. Her violet eyes sparkle under the sun. "I take it this is a new belief? Considering the current situation with Jake."

It's like a punch right in the gut, and a knife right in the heart.

He knows what he should do here. Take a second. Walk a few paces away. Look at the sky. Deep breaths. Chill the fuck out, Strider. Didn't Dave talk about how his sister (Dirk's fucking daughter, what the fuck) had some aspirations of psychoanalysis and whatnot? Rose is playing therapist and he probably needs to be therapized and he should be cool.

He is not cool.

His hands are fists and he slides into fighting stance instinctively. "What about Jake?"

"Roxy and Jane tell it like a cautionary tale about communication issues and boundaries. One of you pushing too hard, the other withdrawing completely."

"Okay, well, Roxy and Jane don't know _dick_ , actually," Dirk growls. "And neither do you, you just fucking _got_ here."

"Sometimes a less involved perspective --"

He holds up his hands, backing away. "Fuck you! We aren't shit to each other. Roxy's new fucking squeeze made you in a lab and maybe he pressed a button that put some Strider in your cakemix, so what? You think that gives you a right to talk about Jake?"

Kanaya is sitting up, now. She looks back and forth between them. "Rose," she says, quietly. It sounds like a warning.

"I honestly want to help," Rose says. She looks at Dirk right in the eyes, as if she can pinpoint his precise stare behind the shades. He believes her, and he knows he believes her, but all he can think is that everyone is talking about him, about him and Jake, about how thoroughly he fucked it all up, about how Jake is long gone, long long gone, and it's going to be an endless eternity when everyone has got a soulmate and he's still alone.

"Fuck off," he repeats, and it's the easiest thing in the world to throw himself into the sky, Prince of Heart duds blooming around him, leaving whatever sorry excuse for family this is behind.


	3. Hope Against Hope

Running away from home, leaving everyone and everything behind, it seems like the sort of thing that requires some packing. Jake finds himself standing in the centre of a henge, arms akimbo, just... turning. Thinking about how he should be pulling out a suitcase. Throwing all his dearest possessions into it.

It doesn't feel like he should be able to just take a running jump and fly away.

But all his prized possessions are down there, on Earth, under the ocean and four hundred years away. And most everything he's picked up since then, he'd kept at Dirk's place. Before everything between them had gotten rotten inside like an old watermelon. Back when he'd really believed that he could make it all work.

"You can still make it all work," the ghost insists from where it sits atop the henge, and Jake turns away and starts off.

It doesn't take long to find himself in the small cairn he'd set up like a cozy little campsite. He and Dirk had spent nights here, too. His eyes avoid the pallet. And the floor. And the walls. Every frigging place he's been on this planet is covered in Dirk memories.

"Jake." The ghost is sitting atop the big old brass-hinged treasure chest the two of them had hauled back from some tomb together. "Jake, come on."

Jake juts up his chin, squares his shoulders, and opens the chest right through the ghost. It puffs away.

He lifts out a stone bust of what appears to be the skeleton of some kind of humanoid ancient tortoise. It has a golden torc, like something they would have worn in that aces film Boudica, around its neck. It's the absolute coolest thing Jake has ever seen in his life.

"Good memories, finding that thing," the ghost says behind him. Its voice is soft, barely above a whisper. Jake swears he can feel the hairs at the back of his neck stir. "We were dungeon-diving in one of your mounds for days. Fuck, we got so far down into the earth that I thought we were going to find the molten fucking core at some point."

"You didn't think we'd find it," Jake says. He can't help but smile a little. It's a good memory. It feels sweet and a little sore in his chest.

"Dude, I was pretty sure it was a fucking trap or something. Endless maze with no escape. No way that shit was going to cough up any real loot."

"You were dead wrong." Jake gazes down at the bust and its golden adornment proudly. He gloated a solid week. Dirk rolled his eyes but looked pretty impressed. _Good instincts,_ he'd said. 

"Fuck yeah. Of course, I still think it's weird as fuck that you just wanted to... keep the damn thing. It's ugly as sin and was _pretty_ clearly meant to be melted down into grist. Instead of doing something useful with it, you just tucked it away in a damn box?"

Jake gets that feeling again. Tightness in his chest, so real it has a damn taste. "First of all, it's fucking cool as shit! Look at it! This old bud could have come right out of an Indiana Jones flick and you know it! I was just waiting for a good place to display it!"

"Right."

"Right is right, bucko." Jake takes a deep breath. "And... and secondly. If we shredded it, that'd be that. Kaput. Keep it around, and every time I got an eyeful of it, it'd ring all the bells in the belfry, and... and maybe it would be like I was back there, just for a second. You know?"

"... yeah. I guess I do. I wanted to turn back, but you were so high on the adventure of it all. Cheeks flushed, sweaty, dirty, and _glowing._ " The ghost laughs quietly, a soft little chuckle. It's warm on the back of Jake's neck, stirring the air. "Fuck, I swear, dude, you never looked more fucking irresistible to me than you did there."

Something flutters in his middle like a whole covey of birds let out at once. "It wasn't actually you," he reminds the ghost. It seems important to draw the lines, all of a sudden. Parcel out exactly who is what and what that means. He hadn't seen hide or hair of the ghost in those days. When it was good.

The ghost makes a dismissive sound. "It wasn't actually not me, either," he says. "My existence is weird and complex, you know that."

Jake rolls his eyes. "Boy howdy, do I ever," he mutters. "I just mean -- you don't know what Dirk was feeling. You just..." he shook his head. "You just say what I think Dirk was feeling." His stomach clenches. "Or what I _wish_ Dirk was feeling."

"Fuck," the ghost says. "Do you somehow think that Dirk _doesn't_ find you amazing? Hell, isn't the entire problem that he found you _too_ amazing?"

Jake rounds on the ghost, still holding the bust. It's heavy. His arm are starting to hurt. That's kind of fucked up, isn't it? He's a god. Shouldn't he be able to carry entire suns on his back or whatnot? Shouldn't one ancient awesome treasure be fishsticks to him?

"You need me to take that?" the ghost offers.

"I've got it!" Jake snaps, defensive, thinking of Dirk always butting in, of Dirk not knowing when to leave well enough alone. Dirk thinks that Jake needs toughening up, needs taking care of, needs training, needs this, needs that. Jake knows what Jake needs and Dirk can just -- "For your frigging information, buster," he grinds out, arms wobbling from the weight as he stares at the ghost. "I quite _fancy_ Dirk thinking I'm the cat's fucking pyjamas, believe it or not! What I'm not so gung-ho keen on is him never, ever, ever, _ever_ trusting that just maybe I feel the same!"

He loses his grip on the bust. He fumbles and captchalogues it before it can leave his hands, and it settles nicely into his sylladex. But the weight felt good and real and he misses it. He doesn't want to sail off into the unknown, the dead of space, with nothing but abstract objects tucked away. It feels...

Is this a mistake?

"Yes," the ghost says immediately. It looks wounded from Jake's little tirade, but there's a desperation growing in it as it seizes Jake's forearms. "This is such a bad plan, dude, come on. Come on. All that shit you just unloaded on me? Say it to Dirk! Fucking _talk_ about it with him."

"He doesn't want to talk to me," Jake protests. "And -- and if he does? And I blast all this hogswallop off into his ear and he decides that maybe it's a fine old plan and -- and then the exact same darned thing just happens again?" He shakes his head, and Dirk's grip gets tighter. "And it's not even just Dirk, it's -- it's everything! It's... I just... I can't, I can't! I --"

_Wait, what --_

Jake's eyes fly open wide. He looks down. "You're --" he begins, but as soon as he notices it, voices it, shifts his attention right onto it, Brain Ghost Dirk's hands go right through him. Jake stares at where they touched. His skin burns. He concentrates on the ghost again, focuses, but... nothing. It doesn't become corporeal. If anything, it blurs out even more, its edges growing fuzzy.

They stare at each other. Or at least, Jake thinks the ghost is staring. Those damn shades.

He shakes himself. "It really isn't up for debate," he says. He tries to be firm and decisive, but his voice wobbles a bit. He walks around the ghost -- because it's too strange to pass through it, again. Not when they'd just touched, when he'd felt its fingerprints burning into his skin. The ghost reaches out to try and grab his arm, but it can't make contact.

The second Jake's feet touch the verdant grass of the surface, he lifts up and closes his eyes and lets himself be carried away.

The vacuum of space closes around him, and it's the easiest thing in the world to just become something... else. To slip through a crack, to find a loophole, and then just realize that breathing is unnecessary and lungs and oxygenated blood are just a construct. In that second, the space around him seems to breathe into life. If he goes limp, lets a current take him and shuts himself off, he can feel each atom brushing against his face. The new sun is warm on his cheeks, and he can breathe the radiation and feel the particles and the heat and the chemical reactions. It feels like when he and Callie built that friggin robo-bunny together, back at the beginning. He practiced soldering boards and attaching wiring to get ready for the real thing, and when he finally got cracking, he could just barely understand how it all worked, but "barely" was still "understand." He built that robot.

He wonders what else he can do. What else he can build.

"Pages have unlimited potential."

The ghost is still here. Jake turns onto his back, and his near-reckoning of the cosmos fades to a dull hum again. Better off that way. Jesus Christmas knows, he can't fuck everything up if he doesn't have access to give it a shot. "But Vriska knew the score," he says, resigned. "What does potential matter when you start out no better than a sack of friggin' turnips?" His eyes flicker open.

Brain Ghost Dirk hovers above him. He isn't wearing shades, and Jake can see concern in those creamsicle eyes. He thinks of eating breakfast at Dirk's kitchen table. Of Dirk watching him across the way, hair flat and wet, wearing boxers and a loose tank, with a darkening hickey on his shoulder. No glasses. No Striderian tomfoolery. Just... relaxed, and human, vulnerable.

There had been lots of moments like that. Good moments.

"If you'd taken those dumb shades off before I'd caught a glimpse of the real Dirk's peepers," Jake asks softly, "would they have looked right?"

"Would you believe me if I said that I honestly don't know?" Brain Ghost Dirk replies, just as quiet.

Jake shrugs. "Maybe," he says.

"Jake," Dirk says. His mouth is doing that thing. That thing where he's hyper-aware of his words, where he wants to say something, where he wants to _communicate_ , but he doesn't know how. And since he's afraid of what will happen if he's just _honest_ for a hell darned fucking second, he makes some joke or, worse, says something vague and needy that puts the ball back into Jake's court, and then it's _Jake's_ responsibility to respond and fix it or feels like a big sack of crapola.

But this Dirk, the ghost Dirk, he doesn't play games. He actually says it.

"You don't want to be alone," he says.

Jake shakes his head and lets himself float further away. "I like being alone!" he replies. He tries for bluster, but it just comes out like he's being a sourpuss. "I spent a good long chunk of my life alone!"

"Right." Dirk shakes his head and snorts. "And you definitely weren't lonely! You never had a single night where Jane was off with her Dad, and Roxy and Dirk weren't responding to messages, and you laid on your bed, looked up at the ceiling, and wished with all your big soft heart that you had somebody. You never thought about watching your favourite movies with someone to riff with. You never wished for someone to hold your rope when you explored the frog ruins. You sure as shit didn't spend half your time whacking it and wishing someone -- Jane, Roxy, _Dirk_ \-- was there to give you a hand."

Jake's cheeks burn. He plants his foot on Brain Ghost Dirk's chest and uses him as a weight, leveraging himself out further into space. The moons are invisible and the Earth is just a tiny blue penny in the distance. It's getting cold. That's okay. Skin, nerves, they're all just constructs, and it's easy to find that loophole again and focus on here, now, and this dumb fucking conversation.

"That's not exactly fair," Jake says. "You're part me. How can a fella actually match wits against a bloke who knows everything going on in his noggin?"

"Might shock you," Brain Ghost Dirk says, floating after him, "but I actually don't know everything."

"You live in my brain."

"Like I keep saying, my existence is --"

"Complicated."

"Right."

Jake sighs. He puts his head in his hands. "Maybe I got a hankering for the old human touch, sometimes, but you don't get it! That was _before_. Back before I really started to crab how _wrong_ I'm wired! Back before I knew how gosh fucking darned quick a dude can get _tired_. Even in the middle of a real good day when you're having a blast, it can hit you smack dab in the face out of nowhere! Then you want go off to catch your frigging breath and you _can't_ because it'll hurt their _feelings_ , but before you know it you've beaten their poor hearts and souls all bloody with your clumsy balderdash, anyway." 

"And that's why you need to explain this to them! Come on, bro. It's really not that tough."

Jake thinks about Grandma. Jade. So bubbly and personal. How would she feel about being told Jake doesn't want her around sometimes for _no reason_? What about John, who seems so darn _nice_? _Right-o, John, this has been a right friggin' blowout of a bull session about movies and all but I need to go away now because I just do, I guess?_ Callie is a chatty little thing, Rose seems like the sort of A-Grade dame who could get _real_ mad if you step wrong, and he's not even sure how to _talk_ to Dave. _Hullo, there, sir. I broke your brother's heart because I don't know how to handle my own gosh-darned emotions. Or his. Especially his._

And his friends. Circuit boards running through Jane's skin and Roxy bleeding out and Dirk...

And Dirk.

How can he even think about where to start, with any of _them?_

"Don't you dare say it's better." Brain Ghost Dirk's hands are on his shoulders. Jake can feel them. He doesn't register them, he _makes_ himself not register them. "You want to be by yourself, sure. But you don't want to be _alone._ "

"I'm not alone," Jake says. "Don't I have you?"

Not registering that he can feel body heat from Dirk, not registering that he can wrap his fingers around his forearms, Jake pulls himself in close and kisses the ghost. It sends a shudder through him and a gasp through Dirk. Jake loves kissing. Jake _misses_ kissing. He misses Dirk's body, Dirk losing himself beneath him, Dirk looking at him with that friggin rapturous expression. He misses Dirk half-asleep in his arms, worn out, murmuring, no filter. Those were their best conversations, always.

Stars twinkle around them and Jake can feel Dirk's arms encircle him. Pull him closer. Jake is thick all around, but Dirk has arms like a friggin Gumby. Dirk lets out a happy moan when Jake pushes his lips apart with his tongue. Dirk slides a knee between Jake's legs, tangling them together. Jake runs fingers through Dirk's hair, soft and damp and fine like he's just out of the shower and hasn't had time to foul it all up with that damn product. Jake groans. Dirk whimpers.

Jake slides his hands beneath Dirk's shirt. Dirk looks like he's made out of twigs and pipe cleaners, but underneath the skin, Jake loves how he can _feel_ tightly coiled muscle like corded wire. He loves the individual vertebrae of Dirk's back. Loves the dips and ridges of his ribs. Loves his sharp, perfect shoulderblades.

Dirk rubs his knee against Jake's crotch. Jake gasps into Dirk's mouth. Jake rolls his hips. Dirk hums his pleasure. Jake bites his lower lip. Dirk shudders.

And then a horrible thought bursts down the doors.

The ghost might not even want this. The ghost is what Jake thinks it is, wants what Jake wants it to want, or thinks that Dirk would want? And -- and in that case, if that's true, then --

Jake's arms go through the ghost, and the kiss ends.

"Don't think about it," the ghost begs from behind him. "I'm only real when you forget. When you stop to think about it, it just makes you remember I'm not him."

"But I _want_ him," Jake says in a small voice. It hurts so bad coming up his throat, he could swear the words are made of knives. He dashes away tears, but more fall. They float like crystal marbles in space before him.

The ghost is silent. And then:

"Yeah," it agrees. "Yeah. I get that. You _should_ want him. Me? Eh. I'm a pretty fucking shitty replacement."

It would be easy if the words sounded bitter or angry or frustrated or even hurt. Jake could get riled up and they could get back into it. But it's not like that at all. They just ring so damn... real. Honest. Sincere.

And tired.

Jake turns in a somersault to face the ghost, only to find that it's gone. The space where it had inhabited is just space.

He swallows hard.

"Come back," he whispers. "You're a perfectly decent replacement, Brain Ghost Dirk. A real bang-up gent. So just... just come back, won't you?"

The words dissipate off into the emptiness.

No ghost.

"Well," Jake says. Once again, he tries for bravado, but another tear leaks out and his voice is shaking. "I said I was better off alone, didn't I?"

Endless space doesn't answer.


	4. Hope Deferred Makes the Heart Sick

The Land of Wind and Shade is pretty much as blue as John's dumbass windsock. Apparently, there used to be more shade and less wind, back when the planet was shrouded in thick grey clouds and covered in rivers of slick oil. Now, the air lashes pretty much constantly, and Dirk pulls up his hood to shield his hair from being blown all whichways. It's pretty fucking pointless, because he’d baked the ocean off of him on Kanaya's outcropping and his hair is probably a spiky, horrible mess. Not to mention what the void of space might have done to it.

Funny how he immediately picked up the trick to travelling through vacuum, to conjuring up clothes, to swimming without needing to breathe, and yet he has no idea how he'd fix his damn hair without a shower, some time, and a whole lot of product.

Godhood. So fucking underrated, right?

Dirk thinks of Jake, of that dumb tortoise statue they'd found together, and he pushes it away.

With a waterlogged planet and an empty universe, it looks as if LOWAS has become the closest thing to HQ they've got. It had been the last of their planets Jade set into orbit, with a sad but triumphant little smile, and so it had seemed natural to dive down through the atmosphere, following the windsocked leader, until they'd reached that maddeningly simple suburban house that just happened to be a thousand stories high.

By the time Dirk had realized Jake wasn't in the godly conga line, it had been way too late to break formation and go looking for him. Sitting on the bottom stair in John's house, listening to trolls and humans babble in the living room, Dirk had flicked his eyes to open a chat window with Jake. Watched the cursor blink. And then closed the window.

John, smiling a gormless fucking smile and being _so damn nice_ , had been kind enough to let Dirk spend the night in his lovely home. It would have to be on the couch, though, because Dave and Karkat were also staying, apparently, in his dad's room, and the grim-faced troll girl who'd fought the Jacks with him claimed John's room without a word, just disappeared inside and closed the door.

"Uh," Dirk had asked, like a fucking _idiot_ , "aren't _you_ gonna sleep there?"

"Um," John had said, and his ears had turned adorably red, "um, actually, well, Roxy said she has room over on LOPAN and really didn't want to go there all alone so I thought it would be nice if I kept her company?"

Right.

So Dirk had spent the night on the couch, looking up at the ceiling, opening and closing a chat window to Jake, and fighting down jealousy rising like puke in the back of his throat that Roxy -- who deserved _all the happiness the world could offer, what the fuck was wrong with him?_ \-- might be off actually being happy.

Taking off down to Earth as soon as everyone had arrived back at John's and scarfed breakfast had seemed like the best way to avoid making a complete fucking jackass of himself.

But now he's walking through the front door of John's house, still not thinking about Jake, and the living room is all but empty.

He'd had this image in his head, where he walks in and everybody looks up. Dave smiles and gives a little salute, Karkat looks away bashfully, Roxy puts one hand high above her head, John waves, Jade flicks her dog ears, Jane grins... but instead, he gets none of that, because none of them are there. Just the same compact, pointy-horned troll girl, sitting in the armchair with her legs pulled up, and she doesn't spare him a glance.

(It shouldn't hurt. She's fucking blind. But he knows she knows he's there, and... come on. At least fake it.)

He struggles to remember that he's pissed as fuck at Rose and her alien girlfriend and Roxy and Jane. All of them butting in, trying to _manage_ his shit. He can manage his own shit just fine and the last thing he needs is all his friends and -- _family_ all gossiping about him like it's fucking high school. So what if they're teenagers. They're also gods.

But he isn't mad enough that he doesn't wish he could fly back down, make it all right, somehow, and then just... enjoy being with another person, again.

He looks at the troll girl. Terezi. That's it. You'd think it'd be easier to remember someone who saved your life and fought like a fucking blind wolverine at your side, but Dirk finds his mind sliding off the trolls. All three of them. They're good people, and they mean the world to people who are now _his_ people, but it's hard to get away from the knowledge that their society was what the Condesce had been trying to create when she ruined his. It's hard to separate these grey-skinned, rainbow blooded teens from the grey-skinned, rainbow blooded Empress who'd subjugated humanity and destroyed Dirk Strider's shot at a normal life.

_I wonder if Roxy feels like this. I wonder what she sees when she looks at them._ It's the kind of thought that makes him automatically pull up his chat window with her, but then he remembers that he's angry as fuck that she's blabbing about _his stuff_ with some girl who they don't even _know_ , and _fuck_ blood. And also, that she's off somewhere with John and he's a piece of shit.

So.

"Yo," he says to the troll girl, as he stalks over and settles onto the couch.

"Hey," she says. Her voice still sounds like something between sweet music and nails on a chalkboard. He's not sure he'll ever get used to it.

He throws his arms over the back of the couch and watches her behind his shades. Is she looking into the distance because she's verklempt, or just because she's blind? Hard to tell. He tries to piece together what he knows about her. There's something going on with that other troll, the one he'd seen right when he'd flown through one of Roxy's windows and who was conspicuously not here. No one had said her name. He isn't even sure what it is. Flicka? Eh, that doesn't seem right. Something. But he'd seen Terezi staring off into the darkness on the victory platform. Hanging back before walking through the doorway. Generally acting like someone who was waiting for something.

He gets it. Sometimes he feels like he's spent his entire life waiting for something.

And because he gets it he doesn't do what he wants to do, which is paddle like a drowning kid over to her and latch on tight. Yeah. He's lonely. He's always fucking lonely. And he gets the feeling that she doesn't want to talk.

He's momentarily proud of himself for keeping his mouth shut. Man. If only he'd had this kind of self control while he was with Jake.

In a whole lot of ways, Dirk hates that he can't think about Jake in the same ways anymore. The ways that he used to, in his shower, hot water blasting down on his back, hand gripping his cock, shuddering and groaning and imagining. Reality killed the fantasy star, and he misses daydreaming about what it _would_ be like, instead of reliving what it was like. All those ideas of Jake yanking him down into a kiss that had made his heart start thumping like a fucking jackhammer were now held hostage by the knowledge that he'd _had_ that, and then he'd ruined it. Fantasies had been fueled by hope, but memories are tainted with the sick knowledge of his thousand and one little mistakes.

But he tries to untether from that. He feels a thrum of power in his fingertips, shivering his brain, and he lets it guide him. He's the God of Souls, the Prince of Heart, and surely if anybody can untangle himself from his own baggage, it's that guy. He pulls apart the threads, separating out the components, setting aside the black and poisonous bits and focusing on the _good_.

On Jake's warm lips.

On Jake's big hands.

On the scratch of Jake's facial hair, because even when he's _just_ fuckin' shaved that shit, it was always back.

The feeling of Jake against him. He always feels so thick in his arms, so solid. Jake kisses without restraint. He doesn't care about hot breath on Dirk's face. He doesn't worry about it being sloppy, or messy. He smiles and they clack teeth. Jake doesn't tie himself into knots about things like that the way that Dirk does. It makes kissing him a drug he'll never get enough of.

He'll never get enough of Jake's fingers on his back, exploring his anatomy like he's trying to decipher a treasure map.

He'll never get enough of Jake grinding against his leg, the bulge in his pants thick and real and enough to make him see red.

He'll never --

"What are you doing?"

Dirk snaps to attention. He gasps. His eyes fly open, and the ghost of Jake flees. Fuck. Fuck, that had been so real and so intense that he isn't sure how to describe it. He sure as shit doesn't have an explanation. It had been like he was there, in a cold expanse of space, with Jake in his arms.

Terezi is staring at him. Her eyes are squinted up like she's trying to see him, and her nose is wrinkled. He feels himself fly onto the defensive, throwing up walls to try and hide from that penetrating gaze.

"Fucking _nothing_ , is what. Stay in your lane."

She snorts and leans back in her chair. "Wow, sure, fine. You start sparking with raspberry lightning and stop breathing and I'll just keep it to myself, over here. Transmission received."

Okay, that... actually sounds kind of bad. But Dirk just stands up and stalks over to the front window. He looks out. He's not sure what he's looking for. Something to do, honestly. An excuse to get away from her blank eyes. Something to do while he silently panics that he'd accidentally done something dangerous over there.

He scoffs internally.

How dangerous could it really be? They'd floated in the vacuum of space, bathing in the radiation and blistering heat of a newborn sun.

Unless there's some loophole. A god can only die when using their powers?

He hadn't even meant to do anything. Fuck. Is he not even allowed to try and get out of his head long enough to take refuge in a fantasy world where he hadn't fucked everything up?

_You didn't_.

He shakes his head, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. That's the little voice he hates the most. Of all the parts of him that tug at his subconscious, whispering their insidious little messages, that's the one that really kills him, because it's the one that _lies_.

Fatalism hurts, but it's honest.

Hope?

Hope can go to hell.

But it's harder than he likes to admit to silence that voice when it gets going.

_If you think about it,_ it reasons, whispering into his ear, _you haven't actually said a single word to Jake since you broke up with him. And you were the one who did the breaking up, remember? Did he really seem as if he didn't want to talk to you, on the platform? When he looked into your eyes and told you to your face that he was glad you were okay?_

He almost groans with relief when a chat window pops up on his glasses.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -- 

TT: Allow me to apologize in advance if I'm interrupting something. Or, I suppose, if I'm just unwelcome. Honestly, I'm not convinced that this is for the best, but Kanaya can be extremely persistent.  
TT: She's made a case for why I should reach out to you at this juncture.  
TT: And so, Father,  
TT: That is, Dirk,  
TT: I  
TT: Hm.  
TT: It's only just now occurred to me, looking at this window, that you and I have the same pestertag. How odd.  
TT: Do you think there's some kind of cosmic meaning to that?  
TT: Yeah.  
TT: I mean, definitely.  
TT: Why wouldn't there be some father/daughter bullshit genetic reasoning why we have the same tag. I mean why not. Fuck. There's a cosmic explanation for fuckin' everything up in here.  
TT: Hah.  
TT: Actually, you're right. There more or less is, isn't there?  
TT: True facts: I think it's less than dope.  
TT: Oh?  
TT: Hm, how interesting.  
TT: I find it rather comforting. The knowledge that all we do is part of a foreordained conclusion. I used to struggle quite mightily with the idea, but ultimately, when you strip all of the feelings of helplessness away, we are one link in a chain going back and forward infinite times in infinite iterations.  
TT: Yeah, okay. Look, that's actually something I'd be willing to get into it over because in my opinion fuck all of that noise, really, but I'm kind of not in the mood right now and something tells me you didn't hit me up to discuss causality.  
TT: Well spotted.  
TT: I didn't.  
TT: Though you can rest assured, I will next time. I've found Roxy frustratingly uninterested in really digging into such topics so far. I won't say I'm not disappointed.  
TT: Are we getting to the thrust of this?  
TT: Father, please. There's no need for such ornery behaviour. And I find myself very corrupted by your use of 'thrust.'  
TT: Roxy would never forgive me if I didn't say 'that's what she said' right now, but I'm doing it under protest.  
TT: Duly noted.  
TT: ... I may have been overzealous in trying to fix your problems.  
TT: May have?  
TT: Oh, very well. It was none of my business, we've only known one another for about thirty-two hours, and you should know I have something of a reputation for treating people as puzzles to be solved rather than exhibiting the appropriate level of empathy.  
TT: I'm also not very good at apologies.  
TT: Well.  
TT: You pretty much get that from me.  
TT: That last part, anyway. Not so much with the puzzling shit. I'm more known for treating people like walnuts I need to break open to get to the meaty part, thus shattering them utterly and leaving them worse than when I found them.  
TT: Good lord.  
TT: Yikes.  
TT: What can I say, you caught me at a weird moment.  
TT: For what it's worth, I'm a lot more angry at Roxy and Jane for shooting the shit about my problems. Uncool.  
TT: Ah, well.  
TT: Don't blame them too much for that.  
TT: I sensed some of the situation, I wanted to know quite badly what the details consisted of, I can be very, very persistent, and I had Kanaya soften them up first in our group chat, last night. They really didn't stand a chance.  
TT: I'll keep that in mind before I piss in their shoes.  
TT: The truth is, Dirk, I'm reaching out with this apology because I don't want to poison our relationship before it has a chance to begin.  
TT: Believe it or not, I never especially felt the lack of a male parental figure in my life. And from what I understand, you never wanted a child. And that isn't what our connection actually is on either end, but it does put us in a potentially interesting situation, doesn't it? Where we can explore that thing neither of us wanted, but now, through a miracle of Paradox Space, actually have.  
TT: I don't want to set fire to that possibility before I even have a chance to delve into it.  
TT: I've been in love with Jake for as long as I can remember, but when I finally had a chance I blew it by being a clingy, manipulative bully. And you know, the fact that I even had a chance to begin with was really only a thing because both me and some independent offshoots of myself were corralling the poor dude into a corner where he didn't really have any choice. And realizing all that, the right thing to do is just to get over him and grow the fuck up and move on, but I'm not sure I'll ever not be in love with him.  
TT: That's the gist.  
TT: Oh.  
TT: Well.  
TT: I didn't expect all of that. At least not right now.  
TT: Surprise, motherfucker.  
TT: Now how am I supposed to learn good language with this sort of example?  
TT: You just... said you liked to fix things.  
TT: And, uh. Yeah. I'm open to anything to fix this shit.  
TT: So... if you can work some magic, by all means.  
TT: Permission granted to meddle.  
TT: I just want results, here, man.  
TT: Well, I can't promise those.  
TT: But... let me think on this one.  
TT: Cool.  
TT: I don't hate you, by the way. I'm just kind of an asshole.  
TT: Oh, stop.  
TT: You're fine.  
TT: You Striders always think the worst of yourselves. Really, have some pride.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] has ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

It could have gone worse.

It had been that little voice that told him to come clean to Rose. And, honestly, Dirk reviews the chat and decides that it could have gone _much_ worse. He can't stop looking at the last line. Does he think the worst of himself?

Maybe.

It's hard to say.

Regardless, it's beyond stupid to think this is going to make any difference. Rose likes to fix things. So what? Dirk likes to build things, but god knows he doesn't built shit, just tears everything down and stomps on it until there's nothing but splinters and dust.

But still.

But still, the feeling he has is something that might be hope, which has got to be the worst feeling in the world.

"Do you really not see him?"

Dirk turns.

Terezi is perched at the edge of her chair. She’s looking at him, brow all scrunched up. No. No, that's not right, she's looking _beside_ him, at the empty space between him and John's front door. And she's looking fucking _intently_ , like she's making aggressive eye contact with a ghost.

Dirk clears his throat nervously. _Do you really not see him,_ she asks. He flicks his eyes to that empty spot beside him. There's nothing there, which -- of course there isn't. She's fucking with him, and he's letting himself get fucked. That, or she's just crazy.

"Yeah. Uh. Look, hey, do you know where Dave and Karkat went off to? Dave says he wants me to get to know the little dude --"

"Shouty. Angry. Kind of cute. Crazy about Dave." She doesn't look away from the empty spot. She tilts her head, as if she's listening to something. And then she shrugs. "He can't see you, hotshot," she says. "Can't hear you, either."

A chill goes down Dirk's spine. He gasps. Terezi raises her eyebrows.

"Well," she says, thoughtful. "He _can_ feel you, I guess."

"What the _fuck_ is going on?" Dirk demands.

Terezi looks at him square in the eye. It's disconcerting, with her empty, blank, red gaze. "There's a ghost here. I've seen him before." She shakes her head. "In yet another life nobody remembers. Do you know what it's like to comb through your entire timeline in every possible variation of events, and only find one version of yourself who was ever happy? And she's _dead_?"

"What do you mean, there's a ghost."

She heaves a sigh. "I _mean_ ," she says, "that there's a ghost. I think he's your ghost, somehow. I'm not sure on the details. Also, I don't care. He's been trying to talk to you since right after you started looking out the window."

"Trying to say... what?"

Terezi falls back in her chair. She looks... miserable, utterly fucking miserable, and for a second, Dirk feels worse than he can remember feeling. That other troll, the one who never came back. Maybe...

Fuck, maybe hope is better. Maybe knowing that Jake is still _out there_ is better. Maybe he's a fucking brat and should really just...

"He says that Jake is gone."

And all other thoughts vanish.

" _What_?"

"He says that Jake has got himself crammed right up his own waste chute and is leaving, forever, somewhere out in space."

Dirk's stomach drops into his shoes. He feels light-headed. He chokes for air, and he can't find it, and he slides down the wall and finds himself on the floor. He feels all the hallways of possibility he's only now realizing he'd still being clinging to start vanishing, doors slamming shut, windows snapping closed, every chance of happiness vanishing.

He'd never stopped believing, he realizes. He'd never stopped believing that somehow, he and Jake would make it through this.

And then there's a hand on his shirt, hauling him up.

As it turns out, trolls are crazy strong.

He towers over Terezi by a solid foot, but the way she looks at him makes him feel like she's staring down her nose at him. "What the fuck is this?" she demands, voice harsh and high. There's something teal collecting in the corners of her eyes, and Dirk realizes abruptly that she's fighting back tears.

"I --" he says.

"Your ghost keeps saying 'why won't they talk to one another, why won't they just _talk_ to one another?' And you're curling into a ball on the floor! It's pathetic!" She shakes him, and he _shakes_. Fucking trolls! "Is he _dead_? Is he lost somewhere out there beyond this _universe_? Fuck! Idiot!"

She shoves him. He fumbles for his feet, manages to catch himself on the wall behind him. There are tears the colour of peacock feathers on her grey cheeks. She shakes herself and stands up straight and looks right at him.

"You have a _chance_ to be happy."

And --

And fuck.

Fuck.

Whatever this ghost is, however it knows anything at all, whatever personal shit is making Terezi say this, and whatever his own brain is fighting to remind him about his own transcendent shittiness...

Maybe he does.

Maybe he does have a chance.

_Fuck_ letting it just _go away._

He's off running before he knows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	5. My Heart is in the Right Place

Jake likes being by himself.

Until he doesn't.

Space is endless. And empty. And dead silent. And for a while, it's wonderful to just marinate in his own thoughts and know that no one will bother him again. He's alone, truly alone, and his thoughts stop crowding around and relax into sweet peace up in his noggin and he sighs happily.

Then, all at once, the emptiness becomes... cavernous.

Jake lays on his back, staring up at newborn stars. He thinks about his feet and suddenly directions flip and he's standing up straight and looking ahead. He blinks and reorients again and he's balanced on the crown of his head and everything is upside down. And soon enough, space and direction and relativity have no meaning at all, because nothing changes, nowhere is up, nowhere is down, and the place where he is is nowhere.

He rifles through his sylladex.

Maybe he should load his guns. Shoot off into nothing. Kickback would propel him backwards. He could learn to move through space just off the recoil of guns -- how cool is that? But the bullets will travel forever, never losing speed or power. What if a couple hundred years from now some poor troll that popped out of that funny looking egg just happens to be standing in its trajectory and dies? He doesn't want to be the lost god who rains doom from space.

He's got some of his old comics squirrelled away in here. A few issues of Spider-Girl. Some X-Men. One of his absolute favourites, Emma Frost #1, where one of his favourite ladies finally got her own show on the road! But Roxy and Dirk had finagled a way to get him those comics, using their appearifiers and sendificators and somesuch, and it's hard not to think of them when he reads them. Roxy teasing him for being a nerd. Dirk seeming genuinely interested in what he thought of this volume or that twist.

He should watch a movie. Yeah! That's the ticket. Movies have always been his boon companions. He gets his skulltop out. There are _hundreds_ of movies on his computers, all bigtime favourites. He pages through the files. It sure would be something to float out in space and watch Avatar, wouldn't it?

... wouldn't it?

Because he's thinking about movie night with Jane and Roxy and Dirk, the four of them together for the first time, and how nice it was when the girls all gasped or laughed or cheered at the right moments, how easy it was to go back and forth with Dirk about the merits of the flicks as the popcorn bowl slowly emptied. He's thinking about he and John really getting going back there before the fighting had started, the first time Jake had really felt all together in at least a flipping _month_ , talking about movies and making plans to watch some together later.

Maybe movies used to be his friends, a way he could enjoy being alone, but now he can't help but to draw a lattice of lines to all the people in his life.

So many people.

There are windows flashing. He shouldn't select any of them. He's out here, alone, where he should be. He should make this a clean break. For all their sakes. It's the right thing to do.

But he just can't. The ghost is gone, chased away, and Jake English is starting to remember what it really feels like to be alone.

\-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] --  
GG: ok!!  
GG: i think maaaybe ive got something!  
GG: i know i said id wait a few days before i messaged you but it cant hurt to just get some thoughts down while ive got them cooking now can it :)?  
GG: so im thinking about some of the things grandpa used to say about skaia tech!! um not that i really knew it was skaia tech back then but hm its kind of weird isnt it? everything i grew up with was actually skaia tech...  
GG: i wonder if thats one of those timeloop things or maybe one of those fortuitous outcomes things? like skaia was our destiny so of course we were raised around skaia tech?  
GG: dave or rose would probably know!  
GG: UMM but anyway!!  
GG: so grandpa used to say that skaia tech would always give you what you needed when it was time but it wasnt magic  
GG: it really was all science-based and everything about it has a mechanism and stuff and it all comes from somewhere! conservation of energy and so forth still seemed to apply!  
GG: sooooo  
GG: if our messaging is still working...  
GG: and this new frog is supposed to be empty except for the stars i made...  
GG: (and really!! everyone gives me all the credit for that but kanaya and callie DEFINITELY helped!! kanaya's so new to her powers so she mostly just provided like... raw strength? and callie i think mostly goes off instinct. but i definitely didn't do it alone and i feel we should be giving them credit too!!!!)  
GG: (damn i keep getting off track :p)  
GG: im trying to say that i think maybe theres some sort of skaia mechanism already in this universe somewhere and thats why this stuff is working!!  
GG: annnnnd  
GG: you always talked about liking to go on adventures and stuff  
GG: soooooooo  
GG: i think you and me should go out there and try to find it!!!!! :D :D  
GG: message me back ok?  
GG: have a really good rest!!

\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] --  
TG: jakeeeey  
TG: omfg  
TG: so like  
TG: you have GOTS TO hang out with me and john asapppp ok  
TG: you guys are gonna get on so well lmfao  
TG: he really totally is you and janeys kid  
TG: not in a weird way or anything just like omggggg he reminds me so much of you guys its so crazy  
TG: he got all janes sass tho  
TG: you would be surprised jake this guy has got some fuckin NEXT LEVEL SASS GOIN ON  
TG: buuut  
TG: he loves terrible movies!!  
TG: and fictional girls hes got crushes on!!  
TG: annnd i dont know he just talks like you sometimes??  
TG: he has got me agreeing to watch so many bad movies tho and youve gotta come sometime  
TG: uh maybe not RIGHT now cuz  
TG: ive got my eye on this one if you know wut i mean wonk  
TG: (i mean im going to kiss his dorky egbert face and he doesnt even know it yet fyeah)  
TG: annnd also cuz i know you and ur def unwinding over there and DAS COOL  
TG: but i know you boi  
TG: you gonna come back lookin for company soons  
TG: and i have it through the grapevine that maybe you saw me die or something which is tbh really sad and shitty :( :(  
TG: so i wanna remind you that i am SUPER ALIVE and stuff so when youre down or up for it or w/e you come hit me and windsock up OK??  
TG: OK!!  
TG: lates ur the best bye

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] --  
TG: uh so yo  
TG: whats up  
TG: we have never talked before and this is awkward  
TG: fuck yeah  
TG: soooo  
TG: you seem like a cool guy lets be bros at some point  
TG: but first  
TG: uh ok so  
TG: ive actually kinda got an idea for how to get the earth like habitable  
TG: so were not just crashing at johns for eternity  
TG: all up in his shit  
TG: stealing his food  
TG: all gettin dorito dust in his couch  
TG: worst houseguests ever yo  
TG: and hes all off trying to get his bang on with my mom  
TG: comes home  
TG: place trashed  
TG: is all like  
TG: yall motherfuckers  
TG: whats a dude gotta do to get his nut  
TG: with your hot mom  
TG: no  
TG: with this hot chick who is also your mom  
TG: there  
TG: nailed it  
TG: this is how i am all the time btw like hey motherfucker welcome to striderville population my dick  
TG: ANYWAY  
TG: so karkat had this idea that like  
TG: the ocean has got to recede eventually right like we got the sun workin and im pretty sure between our three goddesses of actual fucking space we can get the ozone back in order and shit which means that shit is gonna slowly try and go back to its normal state with like ice up at the top and bottom and actual land somewhere inbetween  
TG: you know  
TG: all planetlike  
TG: except  
TG: thats probably gonna take something like a million years and apparently were all gonna live that long but like i said  
TG: think of johns house bro  
TG: johns poor house  
TG: so like  
TG: karkat was like well dude youre the god of fuckin time cant you just hit the fastforward button and we can watch it all comically zip ahead real fast until theres land again  
TG: and like spoilers the answer to that question  
TG: is a mighty NO  
TG: like  
TG: come on dude  
TG: i can time travel myself like my own body and even then i usually need a fuckin mechanism for it  
TG: like  
TG: im a time traveller not a time manipulator right  
TG: buttttt then mom got talking  
TG: roxy  
TG: whatever  
TG: and was like well you know actually we can do way more with our powers than we ever thought we could just look at this rad genetic sequence of actual alien fucking life i made and that was before we went through the door!  
TG: but she kinda had the skull girl to help  
TG: cause that's what she does or something  
TG: ugh okay its taken forever to get to this point  
TG: apparently youve got some wild power levels locked away in that banana hammock and maaaaybe you and callie and i could kind of collab on the whole time travelling earth thing somehow idk  
TG: text me whenever dude  
TG: if youre not there right now  
TG: and ignoring me  
TG: which would be legit  
TG: like i said im like this pretty much all the time  
TG: so uh hit me up whenever if you can stand to  
TG: lates

 

\-- gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] --  
GG: Hi, Jake.  
GG: Ugh :|  
GG: I was going to write a bunch of preamble where I take forever to get to the point, but after having a long talk with my dad and with RoLal, I'm actually trying to be a lot more...  
GG: Honest.  
GG: About how I feel.  
GG: Not that I ever outright lied very much, but I'm starting to realize that maybe beating around the bush and overthinking everything I say and hoping that people magically know what I mean is actually not great for my mental state!  
GG: Who ever would have guessed, right?  
GG: Shocking!  
GG: So.  
GG: The last time we talked where I wasn't either tripping on lollipops or an evil robot, I was really upset at you and went off really hard.  
GG: And I actually think I stand by a lot of what I said...  
GG: But very little of how I said it.  
GG: And if I'm being honest with myself, which I'm really trying to do, I'm as responsible for how bad things got as you are.  
GG: Oh and then there was the stuff I said after I was tripping on lollipops or an evil robot which I really wish we could just forget about but we can't.  
GG: I mean...  
GG: I said it! All of it.  
GG: And I'm starting to think that most of my problems... and... maybe some of yours? Just have to do with not talking about stuff.  
GG: So... when you've got a second...  
GG: You're one of my best friends, Jake. I would absolutely die without you. You mean so much to me. And I would really like to talk.

 

\-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] --  
GA: Hello.  
GA: We Have Not Spoken Before.  
GA: And I Have Been Informed That You Are Enjoying Some Alone Time, Which I Understand, As My Species Is Naturally Quite Solitary.  
GA: But  
GA: Rose Decided To Take A Nap And I Can't Be Quiet Any Longer.  
GA: Something Really Has To Be Done About Your Clothing.  
GA: From What I Can Tell, You Are An Extremely Good-Looking Human And I Would Like To Help You Dress Accordingly.  
GA: Please Contact Me At Your Earliest Convenience As I Have Already Started Sketching Concepts And Don't Want To Go Overboard Without Your Input.  
GA: Thank You.

 

Jake is reeling when he puts away his skulltop. He swallows hard. He feels dizzy. Overwhelmed. He wants his sense of direction to reinstate itself so he isn't literally spinning in space as his brain figuratively circles around inside his skull. 

It's not a bad overwhelmed. It's not that feeling he gets when there are too many presences and voices and forces pulling on him all at once. He can't help but notice almost every one of them said "whenever you're ready" or "I know you're by yourself."

It's more like...

Like...

"Like maybe you're figuring out that people _like_ you or something, holy shit," a voice says at his ear, and Jake turns with his heart in his mouth and nearly sobs in relief when he sees triangle shades, a shock of carrot-top hair, and raspberry-pink duds.

"You came back," he says, voice thick.

The ghost shrugs one shoulder. "Yeah. Don't think you can get rid of me, actually. I think I'm kind of like... suspended between you and Dirk like a hammock, or whatever. One of you would probably have to die to unravel me and, uh..." The ghost indicates him. "You're kind of gods now. Both of you."

"I just thought you were gone forever." Jake swallows hard.

The ghost is still a Dirk; it smirks at him. "I thought you liked being alone."

"I do!" Jake says firmly. _I just don't like being alone forever,_ his mind completes, but he doesn't let himself say it outloud, because isn't alone forever exactly what he'd been trying to achieve, out here?

He thinks he can see the ghost scanning his face. It smiles, softly, sadly. Jake knows that smile. He'd caught it on the real Dirk's face sometimes. Usually when he'd thought Jake wasn't looking. It was a common sight when Jake would twist around to look at him on their tomb raids, or when they were trying on new glad rags they'd spun out out of the alchemiter, or, most often, when Jake was floating happily between sleep and consciousness after they'd had sex. He thinks he mostly understands what the smile means, though he'd always tried not to, because it's terrifying when it's on Dirk.

On the ghost? It just feels... safer.

_"I have more feelings than I think I'll ever be able to put into words,"_ that smile said. _"I have more feelings than I think you can ever return."_

And hell's bells, maybe he's right about that. Maybe they both are, all the Dirks, that Jake will never feel as strongly as them, not ever. It's as possible as anything else. Likely, even.

But...

"I'm glad you're here," Jake says. "I'm glad..." He swallows again. "I'm glad you'll _always_ be here, one way or another."

The sad smile twists. The ghost raises one hand, rubs his fingers through his hair. Jake can't help but remember how those spikes feel, hard and crunchy on top and fine as spidersilk underneath. "Yeah, well," the ghost says, and it sounds almost embarrassed. "I think you're gonna be way less happy with me in about ten seconds."

Jake furrows his brow. "What? Why? What happens in ten seconds?"

"Hanging around you so much in the last few hours gave me a good dose of Hope radiation, I think," the ghost says. "Let me kind of... interact more than I normally would. With people not you. I mean, not that I could carry on a conversation or something, but I _did_ manage to get some kind of feedback going between me and him, like audio equipment squealing or whatever, when I touched him."

Jake feels dizzy again. His throat is very dry, and his heart is hammering in his throat. "Him?" he squeaks, but fuck it, he knows exactly who the ghost is talking about.

"Jake?"

A small, hesitant, terrified voice, coming from behind him.

The ghost gives a jaunty little salute around that twisted, self-loathing smile, and vanishes.

Jake swallows.

He turns around.

He doesn't know how he can tell that it's the real Dirk. Not a ghost, but really him, really there. Maybe his edges just seem firmer. Maybe his colour seem brighter. Or maybe it's not that he can actually see, but instead just something in his heart or his head. Brain Ghost Dirk exists because Jake's very self feeds him. The real Dirk...

Jake has absolutely no control over him at all.

Maybe that's why it's so scary.

He looks at the real Dirk, who is here, somehow, floating akimbo in space before him, and he doesn't know what to say.

Dirk's adam's apple bobs.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," Jake replies, because it's easy and it's right there and why not take an easy, obvious thing when it's right in front of you.

Dirk nods. He nods like he's agreeing with something, like Jake had just said something really profound and he's letting it sink in and wrapping his mind around it. "Yeah," he says. "Uh. What are... what are you doing out here?"

There's no easy, obvious answer to that one. Jake's tongue trips over potential answers and he ends up saying nothing at all, just looking at Dirk, who is real and here and not a ghost at all. The ghost had said he'd done this, somehow. Brought Dirk here. Communicated. What does that mean?

No, actually. Jake thinks he knows what it means.

He clears his throat. It seems to free up room for words to come out. "Actually," he says. "I reckon that you kinda know why I'm here."

Maybe it's that he's a god now, and he can feel the world that belongs to him respond to little movements. Or maybe it's just that he'd dated Dirk for months and spent almost all his time with him, before things went sour. Whatever it is, he can tell, somehow, that Dirk is closing his eyes behind those shades. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, out here in a vacuum where there's no air at all to breathe, and then he runs his hand through his hair, which is so much like the ghost that Jake actually cracks a smile.

It's so easy to talk to the ghost. But it's just Dirk. So why...

"Please don't go," Dirk says, and it's barely a whisper.

Jake swallows the lump in his throat. He takes a deep breath of his own, in which no oxygen enters his lungs and yet, at the same time, it does. The breath, illogical as it is, shudders. He wants to shove his hands into his pockets, but these sidekick underpants don't have any. He wants to scuff his foot, but there's no ground and he's not sure if he's standing and looking forward at Dirk or laying and looking up at Dirk.

He's not sure he likes the vast expanse of space.

He thinks that maybe he likes solid ground beneath his feet, damp grass and open air and singing bugs and whistling birds and terrifying monsters and _real things_.

He thinks that maybe he likes people, too. He likes relationships. He likes having friends. He likes being loved.

Just because he doesn't want them there all the time doesn't mean he doesn't want them there at all.

And he doesn't know how to say any of this, because he's not good with words, he's fucking _awful_ with actually thinking things out and then expressing them. Dirk is a man of words. Jake is a man of _action_.

So he pushes himself forward.

Maybe it's a bad fucking idea. Maybe it is! Maybe he doesn't _care_. Dirk's hands go up in a warding gesture as Jake gets close, but it's so friggin' easy to wrestle those hands away and wrap his arms around Dirk's neck and pull him close. Easier than breathing to reach out and grab those _stupid_ shades and tear them off Dirk's face and send them spinning out into space. Easiest of all to look deep into his eyes, orange and huge and filled with so many feelings Jake would never be able to catalogue them all, and then close his own and hungrily pull in for a kiss.

Dirk goes stiff and for a terrible second, Jake thinks he's going to shove him away. If Dirk puts his hands on Jake's chest and pushes, that'll be it, he thinks. He'll let himself float off and he'll just disappear because right now he's reaching for a lifeboat and he doesn't think he can do it if one doesn't come his way...

But he shouldn't have worried so much.

Dirk was never good at refusing him.

Thin, strong arms come up around him. Long slender fingers bury into his hair. Dirk's mouth opens all at once, happily, eagerly, and Jake's tongue dives inside. Dirk moans somewhere in his throat, and Jake echoes the sound encouragingly. He splays his hands on Dirk's back. The soft fabric of his shirt doesn't do much to hide those glorious shoulderblades.

Jake pulls his tongue back, pulls his mouth away, and Dirk tries to follow him. Jake fists a hand in Dirk's hair and holds him steady. Jake cracks his eyes open and Dirk is looking at him through hooded eyes, cheeks flushed bright red and breathing hard.

Where had things gone so wrong between them?

_When you stopped telling each other what you really wanted, if you ever even did._

Well. None of that, then.

"I want you," Jake says, and he moves in to nip at Dirk's bottom lip, kiss his chin, lick his neck.

"We --" Dirk cuts himself off with a high pitched little moan. Jake sighs happily. Dirk shakes his head. "We should talk, Jake," he says. "We should talk. We need to... everything is still so..."

Jake raises his head. "I don't want to talk yet," he says firmly.

Dirk swallows hard. His eyes squeeze close and then open again, just a crack. "I fucked up," he says, his voice catching, hard. "I fucked up, Jake, and I'm so fucking sorry and I don't want this if it's -- if it's just some sort of -- I can't bear for you to just --"

"It's not," Jake says. "I'm not. I --"

He doesn't want to talk because he doesn't want to put things into words because he's _bad_ at it, because he always says it wrong, he can't get it out, Dirk hears it wrong, Dirk wants to pick it apart, Dirk wants to overanalyze it and then talk about the talking and then talk about the _talking_ about the talking, but...

Jake kisses Dirk's neck again. He kisses the sharp line of his jaw. He kisses the hollow under his ear. He worries his earlobe with his teeth. He says, softly, so Dirk can hear him: "We both fucked up."

"Fuck," Dirk says, a rush of air, because Jake remembers how sensitive he is around the ears. And then, more clearly: "Fuck. No. You don't -- don't take responsibility for this, this is me, Jake. This is me. I don't deserve..." He shakes his head. Jake blows softly into his ear. He keens. "I can't take this if I don't know you want me!" Dirk shouts all at once, high and desperate and pained.

Jake pulls back.

Dirk's face is all scrunched up as though he's waiting for a blow.

Jake grinds his teeth, raises his index finger in a point, and then stabs it into Dirk's chest, just above his heart. Dirk gasps.

"Okey dokey," Jake says. There's something hot in his chest, and he thinks maybe he's angry? But he's not, really. It's something close, but something different. It feels better than angry. It feels... clean. "Righty-o," he says. "This right here is what really gets my goat, Strider."

"This right what?"

"This," Jake repeats. "You throwing everything back to me. Always. Just tossing it right on back and then it's in my court again, every friggin time, until I barely even know _what_ I mean anymore!"

"I --"

"Oh, yes, you are! Don't give me this! Don't you try and say oh, no, Jake, that's not what I'm doing -- because it _is_. Do you remember what I said just before I started getting down to necking you?"

"You --"

"I said _I want you!_ " Jake stabs Dirk hard with his finger again. "That's what I said! There's not a whole bucketload of ambiguity there, now is there? But there you go, not even a minute later, asking me whether or not I want you!"

Dirk looks defensive. His chest puffs out like he's gonna really get into it, really just let loose, and Jake squares his shoulders because boy howdy he can take it.

But Dirk doesn't say anything.

He deflates, instead.

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe."

And then Jake doesn't really know what to say.

That clean-burning red feeling slinks away and morphs into something else, something that burns thick and smokey and makes the back of his mouth taste acrid. It brings back good memories... and bad. It brings back the way Dirk had looked, through the foggy haze of whatever they'd been high on, when he'd said 'it's over, Jake.' It brings back the way he'd felt, getting Dirk's messages, thinking how bad he wanted to see him and how much he never wanted to see him again.

Dirk can see what's happening, because his eyes flicker with panic. "Hey," he says, and his voice has got that tone to it that he gets when he's about to try and take charge and _manage_ something. "Yo, hey, dude. It's... it's cool, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to... I just... come on. I..." He tilts his neck up, exposing his neck like he's an animal. "Kiss me again. Please?"

Jake covers his face with his hands. He breathes out hard. His glasses steam up. He shakes himself like a dog. He lowers his hands.

"This is never gonna work," he says, feeling deeply, echoingly empty. What had all seemed so clear such a short time ago just feels hopefully naive now, because he's still just him. He's still going to hurt Dirk, hurt _everyone_ , because he doesn't know how to love or be loved by anyone at all. "I'm sorry."

"Jake -- Jake, no, please, stop --"

But when Jake twists about and floats just a bit away, _determined_ to make it work this time, to get out there in space and be by himself and just stop _hurting_ people... the ghost appears.

It doesn't say anything, not at first. It stands there with folded arms and looks at him. No shades. Just Dirk's delicious creamsicle eyes, watching him.

"What?" Jake asks, throwing it out like an accusation. It's all hoarse. He realizes that he's crying. He dashes tears off his cheeks. He's going to get himself dehydrated. _Can_ he get dehydrated?

"What?" Dirk echoes from behind him.

The ghost unfolds its arms and sighs. "Dumbass," it says. The insult is delivered gently, like a playful nudge. "What, now, is it suddenly a great idea after all? Are you going to run away and shut everyone out every single time things go badly for you?"

Jake flinches. "That's not what I'm doing," he snaps.

"Fuck yes, it is. Ten minutes ago you were realizing how fucking dumb it is to just blast off into space and never come back. You're a god now, hurray, whatever. You're still a person. You're still human. And humans need other humans. Remember how fucked up Andy got in Shawshank when he was in solitary?"

Cautiously, Jake nods.

"Yeah. Totally fucking brain-melted, right? And yet you're actually telling me that you want to spend _all eternity_ in solitary fucking confinement?"

Jake swallows. "It's not for me," he says. "It's for everyone else."

"Shit," Dirk says softly. "Are you talking to it? To... to the ghost?"

"Bullshit," the ghost says. It puts its hands on its hips, which is a position Jake has never seen Dirk in, ever, and he can't help but snort, thinking that he looks so... _sassy_. The ghost seems to realize it and drops its hands. It blushes. It shakes its head. "Look," it says. "you're way too smart to lie to yourself like this. Haven't you figured out by now that _that's_ where a big part of your problem is coming from? You tell yourself whatever version of things makes the world seem _easiest_ for you."

"I don't!"

"Oh, yeah? What about Jane, then, and her crush? Or about Dirk's, all those years ago, when you tried to shut him down by saying he wasn't a girl? What about Jade? You _knew_ she couldn't possibly be your real grandma, but you wanted to believe she was. Every fucking day you're spinning a version of things for yourself that makes you _feel_ better, English, but it's all just bullshit."

Jake wants to snap back, but he doesn't know what to say. He thinks...

He thinks that maybe the ghost is right.

"This right now? It's another lie. You want to believe that you're leaving because people are better off without you. But the real deal is that you're leaving for the same reason you did it before, back in the session. Because you don't know how to deal with shit, you're bad at expressing yourself, and it's just easier to shut yourself away."

Yeah.

The stupid frigging ghost is definitely right.

It smiles.

"Cool," it says. "Now, please, just... _talk_ to him. You and me, it'll never work. But you know... I'll settle for you and him."

It vanishes.

Jake stares where it was.

He finds his voice.

"Okay," he says. "Let's... let's talk, then."


	6. Hope Springs Eternal

The space behind Jake is empty.

Dirk swallows hard, pulling his eyes from the empty blackness to Jake’s face. _Let’s talk,_ echoes in his head, and hell if there isn’t a laundry list of things to talk about, but there’s one riding high in his mind right now.

“What _is_ it?”

His soft voice hangs in the void around them, threading through atoms of hydrogen and helium, inhabiting the vacuum of the intergalactic medium, or whatever it is here in this new, raw existence. He sounds almost reverent, and maybe he is, because what the fuck, right?

What the fuck.

“Wh --” Jake’s eyes widen a bit behind his glasses and then he hunches his shoulders a bit. “Oh, you mean -- the ghost.” He kicks like he’s prodding at a clump of grass. “He’s -- well, he’s just… well, now, see here! This isn’t really what I had in mind when I said ‘talk!’ What about the, the me running off and the you throwing me the cold mitten and the us making a real flippety fuck-up of the whole affair? I want to talk about _that_.”

“So do I,” Dirk agrees, and he does, because the way Jake is looking makes him think there’s an actual chance that talking might do some good and he’s so fucking scared to even think about that it’s making his stomach a bit sick with desperate, aching hope. But not even that can keep him from glancing over Jake’s shoulder again. “Just…”

Jake twists to follow his eyes. “He left,” he says. “I think he wanted to give us some privacy.”

“Why do I have a ghost? Is this some -- some fucking horrorterror-inspired consequence of the many deaths of Dirk Strider, here?”

Jake shakes his head. “No,” he says. “At least, I sure don’t think so, because he’s been skulking about a good bit before you had your first rendezvous with the old guillotine.”

The entirety of two universes are reorienting around him, and Dirk tries to piece together the situation. “How long is a ‘good bit?’” he asks.

Jake smiles weakly, bringing up his hands and spreading his fingers helplessly. “A decent little sum of time?” he offers, and then sighs. “A hell of a _long_ time, I think, if I’m telling it true, Strider. The first time I really _saw_ the friggin’ thing and it admitted what it was, that was the day we got our heineys into the game. But. Um. I think I’ve gotten the impression that the darned thing has been in my orbit for quite a while before that.”

Dirk shakes his head. It defies all fucking reasonable belief. “And… what the fuck _is_ it?” 

Jake shrugs one shoulder. “Er, well. That’s a bit of a loaded question, there, Dirk. I feel there’s a whole lot of gum-flapping to be done, maybe, before we get to that. You know. The talking, and all.” He smiles weakly, sickly, and then he runs a hand through his hair. It sticks back up the way it does.

Suddenly, Dirk feels all ten fingers itch to get over there and card his fingers through that thick dark hair. Jesus, Jake’d be open to it. Jake had come at him. They’d been kissing with passion and eagerness just minutes ago. Before Dirk had, in his usual way, ruined it by opening his dumb fucking mouth. After all of this, after all of _everything_ , Jake English still wants to kiss him and he’s too busy being his most bullshit self.

“Fuck,” Dirk blurts. “Jesus fuck, I’m fucking sorry, dude. Jesus. _Fuck._ I’m such a fucking idiot, I’m sorry, I’m sorry about all of it.” And then, as Jake opens his mouth, Dirk can’t stop himself. “But come on! You really thought you could fix this shit by running away? Again? _Forever_? Just going off into space by yourself, forever, except -- _not_ by yourself, I guess. Does it -- what, does it _haunt_ you, or something? Does it look like me? Sound like me? ”

“Jesus fucking Christmas!” Jake explodes, throwing his hands into the air, “can you shut your trap for one goshfuckingdarned second, Strider? Holy toledo! Just -- let a fella tackle one greased up pig before loading the next one into the cannon, won’t you?”

“And if that’s not a mental image…”

“Don’t you dodge and weave, now!”

Dirk swallows hard. “You said we should talk,” he says weakly. “There’s just...fuck. There’s a whole fuckin’ lot of shit to talk about.”

Jake’s mouth quirks. “Well,” he admits. “ _That’s_ the real mccoy.”

A moment of silence. Dirk doesn’t want to say anything, afraid that he’ll step on Jake’s toes. Jake looks back at him, a little hint of panic in his eyes.

Dirk licks his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, quieter than before. He goes to elaborate, to pull out the reams of itemized lists he has to apologize for. But there’s a clarity in this moment. Just the two of them, and maybe a ghost, floating alone in space, and maybe it’s their last chance, or else the first shot at something new. Dragging it all up, categorizing his own faults, laying out all the things he did wrong and all the reasons Jake should hate him… it feels wrong. Self-indulgent. It feels like the exact shit Rose scolded him for, back in the empty ocean.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, even quieter. “About a whole lot of shit.”

Jake blinks slowly. Dirk sees a telltale shimmer in his emerald eyes. “I. Right-o, Dirk. Me -- me too.”

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet.

Dirk becomes aware of a movement somewhere far off in the distance, billions of light-years away. A collection of atoms drifting through space pull together, find each other in the darkness, coalesce. Gravity kicks in, the rules of space change, and he and Jake both turn their heads to look in the direction of the birthing nebula.

“Golly,” Jake murmurs.

Dirk nods.

Jake shakes his head and chuckles wryly. “Lord and mercy, nothing is ever going to be the same, is it, Dirk?” He raises his hands and spreads his fingers, trailing them through the empty vacuum before him like he’s trying to feel the weight of stardust. “Isn’t it just the screwiest thing that I don’t feel so very different? Still just Jake, see. Still the goofy gumball without a clue how to sort himself out. Just seeing what I wanna see, blinding myself to the rest, and then forging forward based on a fart and a prayer, even if it leads me out into...” He spreads his arms and indicates the darkness all around them. “Seems a little silly that I’m still just… me. Doesn’t it?”

“Sure.”

Jake furrows his brow.

Dirk hurries to elaborate. “I mean, yeah, I get what you’re saying. This is all -- dumb as shit, isn’t it? Not exactly super divine-type behavior. But, I mean, same?” He winces. Not smooth. Awkward. “I mean --”

“No, I think I know what you mean,” Jake says.

Dirk looks at him. God, he’s so beautiful he could put newly kindled stars and forming nebulae to shame. Before he even knows it, he’s drifting closer, propelled more by bone-deep want and need than any conscious effort. Jake notices the proximity all at once and breaks into one of his especially crooked smiles, reaching out.

It’s hard not to look around nervously as Jake pulls him close, even as tension melts and hope starts to swirl together into something real in his middle. “Uh,” Dirk says, quiet, his face close to Jake’s. “So…”

“You didn’t really want to break up with me. Did you, Dirk?” Jake asks quietly and plaintively.

“God, fuck, no.” Dirk swallows around a lump the size of a newly hung moon. “One hundred percent no, dude, I just -- fuck. I was already feeling like pretty much the pits, and then you show up with your candy ass raving about marrying everybody like you were. I was mad as hell, and more at me than you, and pretty sure it was all about to be over anyway. Seemed a lot easier to take control of the situation, you know? Beat you to the punch. Make it my choice.” He swallows faintly. Jake’s hands are climbing up his back, and it’s making him a little light-headed. “Can’t get your heart broken if you break it yourself, first.”

“As if this dope can break a heart.” Jake pulls in closer, pressing his rough, sandpaper face against the side of Dirk’s neck. Dirk’s heart skips a beat, and then starts hammering like a herd of wild horses.

“Fuck off,” he breathes, weak at the knees and glad he’s floating in space so he can’t crumple. “There’s no way you don’t know how capable of you are of some pretty large-scale heartbreak, dude…”

Jake pulls out a bit. He looks into Dirk’s eyes. It’s intense. Dirk’s breath gets shallow, and things are definitely happening in the ludicrous lines of his prince-y bloomers.

“Gosh fucking darnit, Dirk. I keep on making the same mistakes, don’t I?” He shakes his head. “I want to promise to stop running away. But jeezy creezy, I’m not sure I can. When I get myself all balled up and bothered, it’s just what comes naturally to me.”

Dirk smiles weakly. It feels more like a grimace. _I get it,_ he should say, but it’s hard. He doesn’t get it, and he _wants_ that promise. He wants Jake to say something fucking Hollywood romantic, the sort of thing that he’d roll his eyes at in a movie while Jake cheered. He wants professions of fidelity, plans for the future. He wants three small words. He wants almost anything more comforting than _this is going to keep happening._

And yet, a couple hours ago, he was pretty sure there was nothing for him, here. No future for him and Jake at all, but rather a lifetime of hating himself and knowing he’d fucked up one the only things he’d ever really wanted.

Instead, Jake’s hands are sliding down onto his ass, lips and teeth teasing at his jawline.

It’s probably not time to want it all.

It’s probably time to wrap his mind around this, around the imperfect reality of Jake English, and see if there’s not somewhere they can meet in the middle so at least they can meet at all.

Dirk slides his hands through Jake’s hair.

It’s heaven.

“How about,” he murmurs, breathless, “how about we just try not to get you to that state, yeah? _I_ want to promise that I’ll be less --” Pathetic. Clingy. Controlling. Desperate. “... demanding. But, yeah. I get in that frame of mind and there’s no stopping me.” He swallows hard. “Do you even want to -- I mean, assuming you even have any fuckin’ _desire_ to get back to… you know, to being a thing, you and me, do you even think it’s worth…”

“I sure am tired of talking, Dirk,” Jake whispers against his ear.

Dirk forces his wagging tongue still, twists his head, and meets Jake’s lips in a kiss.

And it’s good. Wet and relaxed and warm, and then more eager, tongues exploring. Jake is as forward as he always is, pushing into Dirk’s mouth and wrapping one hand tightly around the back of his neck to drag him closer. His other hand presses their hips together, finding that sweet spot where their dicks overlap, and then they grind together. Dirk whines.

Jake grunts, pleased.

It’s still a shock, that forcefulness. Dirk used to lay awake, staring at the ceiling, gripping his own cock, planning how he’d slowly introduce Jake into the role he so badly wanted to see him in. It would be a hell of a task, but Dirk was good at this sort of thing. He’d teach the blithely charming, wide-eyed, probably straight Jake English how great it would be to take control and show Dirk a thing or two.

How fucking shocked he’d been when Jake hadn’t even needed two words of prompting to leap into that role all by himself.

And fuck if he hadn’t just gotten better with experience.

Jake begins to pull at the mulberry t-shirt godhood had saddled Dirk with.

_Shit_.

Some truly destructive instincts rev their engines.

_Are you sure?_ Dirk wants to ask. _Do you really want this? Stop a second, let’s think about this. I think we should talk more. I don’t know if anything’s really settled, here. Are we back together? Are you my boyfriend? Do you_ want _to be my boyfriend? Or is all this just something you think I want?_

__“Jake,” he breathes weakly when Jake pulls off his lips to start kissing down his chin, his jaw, his neck._ _

__“Mn?” Jake responds, hauling up his shirt._ _

___I need you to tell me you want this._ _ _

__Dirk swallows hard._ _

__“Glad I found you.” He raises his arms up over his head, and Jake pulls off his shirt and tosses it out into the void. It dissolves into threads and energy._ _

__“Glad you came a-lookin’,” Jake replies._ _

__Then his clever fingers and white gapped teeth find his nipples._ _

__Dirk rolls his head back, gasping and moaning, and he lets Jake toy with him. His nerves light up, glowing with energy in the black expanse. He gets played like a guitar, Jake’s fingers strumming him, running lightly down his ribs, Jake’s tongue dipping into his navel, tights and slippers and poofy asshole pants vanishing, Jake kissing the sharp lines of his pelvic bones._ _

__“Ah,” Dirk cries, fingers digging into Jake’s hair, nails flexing into his scalp, when Jake takes his dick into his mouth. “Ah, ah, Jake.” _I love you._ He bites his lip hard enough he tastes sharp iron._ _

__It heals almost instantly._ _

__When Dirk looks down, Jake is staring up at him with one entire ball in his mouth. Dirk’s long, thin dick is resting on his face, glistening wetly with saliva. Jake’s eyes sparkle and he swirls his tongue in wide, lazy circles around the engulfed testicle._ _

__Dirk shudders from head to toe._ _

__His mouth aches to taste Jake, too. He’s a terrible receiver and he knows it. There’s a level of deep-seated pathetic nonsense in how he can’t watch someone else suck dick without craving it for himself, but fuck it. Whatever. They’re literally floating through space and there’ll never be a better time to take advantage of the tantric opportunities of zero-g._ _

__It’s easy enough to use his hands to tug at Jake’s hair and pull him up. Dirk’s cock falls out of his mouth with a pop. The second there are clothes in reach, Dirk starts tugging at them._ _

__Jake sighs, pleased. “Do you need some help getting this off me, compadre?” he asks lightly, but Dirk just shakes his head, channeling godhood and propelling himself to angle down -- not that there’s any such thing as down. He uses mustard-yellow t-shirt as leverage, and Jake makes a happy, surprised sort of sound when he realizes what’s about to go down._ _

__He’s straining at his little yellow speedo. It’s the easiest thing in the world to just lift one edge to the side, freeing cock and balls to the eager attention of Dirk’s mouth. The taste is musky and salty and oh-so-good. Dirk moans in pleasure._ _

__Jake echoes him._ _

__“Oh, yes,” he gasps. “Oh, holy toledo, there, Dirk. Now you’re on the trolley.”_ _

___Is it good?_ Dirk wants to ask. _Do you like this? I’ll stop if you want me too.__ _

__Jake goes back to work and the combination of getting and giving, the insistent pressure of Jake rocking his hips against his face, the increasingly sloppy ministrations of tongue and mouth, it finally lets Dirk get out of his head._ _

__Dirk comes first, shaking, groaning and whimpering around a mouthful of dick. With Jake’s mouth free, he gets about a dozen times more vocal, babbling nonsense and pleading for relief._ _

__“Oh, lord, Dirk,” he’s saying, voice rough with pleasure. “Shit, Dirk, I thought this was done. I thought you were done with me. I’m so glad this is happening.”_ _

__Dirk almost snorts._ _

___Yeah. Me, too, pal. There’s no way you’re as psyched about the whole thing as I am._ _ _

__But Jake always did like sex, and Dirk is more than happy -- more than _thrilled_ \-- to live in this moment of this thing they could always agree on._ _

__When Jake cries out and the first taste hits the back of Dirk’s tongue, he pulls off and spins around to orient himself upright once more. And there’s something fucking _magical_ about watching Jake’s features clench and his hips buck while ropes of perfectly round pearls drift away._ _

__Dirk kisses his mouth and curls a hand up into his hair and Jake’s body goes still but for the rise and fall of his chest. They breathe space through each other._ _

__Slowly, Dirk pulls away._ _

__Every nerve in his body is buzzing faintly with bliss. He chokes down a barrage of questions, settling for stroking Jake’s face and his hair, instead. Jake’s eyes flicker open, land on Dirk’s face, and he smiles._ _

__Dirk’s heart hurts._ _

__“I’m real glad you didn’t mean it,” Jake breathes. “When you threw me the mitt, I mean. Maybe I deserved it, but I didn’t want to be broken up with you.”_ _

__“You didn’t deserve shit,” Dirk replies. And then, quieter, barely above a whisper, he adds, “but, uh, yeah. Me too. I -- I really didn’t -- I really _don’t_ want us to be over.”_ _

__Jake pulls close, burying his face in Dirk’s collarbone, and Dirk wraps an arm around his shoulders, and they float in aimless space._ _

__Maybe there’s some hope in this new world, after all._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmfao @ that I thought I would get this entire fic done in one week back in august 2016 holy shit
> 
> ALMOST DONE
> 
> follow me @ my [tumblr](http://purplepurpleunicornsparkle.tumblr.com)!


	7. The God of Hearts finds hope

They float together, wrapped up in one another’s arms. Dirk is pliable, quiet, and warm. Jake can feel the flutter of his pulse where his hands rest on his wrists, where his lips lay against his neck. Jake curls himself around him, intertwining their limbs and bodies however he can.

It feels good, touching him. It feels really, really good. A whole lot of doubts slip away in the face of the tactile goodness of real human touch. Maybe there _is_ something the matter with him, but if nothing else, at least it all seems to make sense when there’s someone to touch and no pesky confusing questions to answer and his head is nice and clear.

“So, all’s well that ends well?”

It’s Dirk’s voice, and so Jake looks down at him. But Dirk’s eyes are closed and he’s breathing evenly.

“Up here, dude.”

It’s the ghost.

Of course it is. It should have been obvious. The ghost’s voice is a little different from Dirk’s. The cadences are off, and sometimes it says things -- like _all’s well that ends well_ \-- that the real Dirk probably wouldn’t say without a heavy twist of irony. But it sure is weird to hear a guy’s voice coming from somewhere other than the guy.

The ghost floats a few metres away. He’s as naked as the real Dirk, and sporting a semi. Jake avoids looking right at it. It feels untoward.

The ghost notices his averted gaze and shrugs. “Fine, but just so you know, I think it’s a little bigger than his.” He juts his chin at the dozing Dirk.

“Oh, stuff it,” Jake mutters.

Dirk moans sleepily and his brow furrows.

“No, really,” the ghost continues. “Maybe not longer -- the original copy is impressive enough in that category -- but it’s definitely thicker.” He hums thoughtfully. “I guess that maybe should tell us both something, huh?”

“What the hell kind of something?” Jake shoots back, accusatory, his face hot.

And the ghost’s smile is sad enough that Jake’s heart stops beating. “Well, a surprising amount of different somethings, honestly. But mostly that there are things you don’t know about him? That things aren’t always going to be the way you think they are.”

“Or maybe,” Jake murmurs, “just that I’m the sort of lecherous bon vivante who imagines a boy he’s got a thing for with a big ole pecker! It isn’t always so complex, Brain Ghost Dirk.” He shakes his head and sighs. It sounds a lot more wistful than he intended it to. “In some ways you’re exactly like him.”

“Not exactly.”

The voice is a whole lot closer.

Jake looks up.

The ghost is hovering just in front of him, their noses just a dozen centimetres apart. “One way or the other,” he muses, sort of bobbing up and down in black space, “I think I’m always going to be the Dirk you think exists. Mixed with more than just a dash of English.” He shakes his head. Sighs. Wistful, just like Jake.

“Is that the worst thing to be?” Jake asks. A ball of confusing feeling tugs at his insides. Despite being all wrapped up with Dirk, despite the feeling of Dirk’s chest expanding against his own body, despite his fingers tangled up in Dirk’s soft clementine hair… he’s got an echo of a familiar feeling twisting through him like a vicious snake.

“Nah,” the ghost replies, smiling a bit. “Don’t get me wrong, dude. I don’t mind being me. I’m not sure it’s the _best_ thing I could possibly be, or that it’s what I _would_ be, given the chance, but I’m not living any sort of existential horror over here, or anything.” He shrugs. “Maybe I should be? I don’t know. He probably would.” He juts his chin at the sleeping Dirk.

Jake nods, understanding what he means without needing it explained.

“I serve a purpose, is what I’m saying,” the ghost continues. “I do my part. You made me cause you need me. I’m glad I’m needed. Feels good. Being useful.”

Jake manages to find his tongue. “Well,” he begins, “of _course_ you’re useful, old chap, because let me just tell you, I don’t know how I’d ever --”

And there’s a desperate sort of pleading in his voice, a hint of desperation, an edge of _don’t go_ that lets Jake know what’s coming next before the ghost even says the words.

After all, it’s part of him.

“Think I should take off for a bit,” the ghosts says quietly.

“Please don’t.”

“Come on, don’t make it awkward, dude. You know this is how it’s gonna be. I couldn’t even suggest this shit if it wasn’t on your mind. If you didn’t _know_ already. Are you really going to complicate my weird existence even more by arguing with yourself, here?”

“I…” Jake swallows hard.

The ghost smiles, running a thumb gently up the curve of Jake’s cheek. And Jake _wants_ to feel his warmth and his presence, like he did before the real Dirk found him, but he doesn’t feel anything at all.

Tears prickle at the back of his eyes and he swallows again, even harder.

“You say you’re taking off ‘for a bit,’” he says, scrunching up his face to keep himself from crying. “Can’t you do better than that, you damned brain ghost? Give a guy a ballpark number before you go fluttering off? How long is ‘a bit,’ anyway?”

The ghost rolls its eyes and somersaults a few feet away. When it straightens out again, some of the sadness is gone from its face, and that’s how Jake knows he’s accepted it.

“Until you call me back, I guess. Fuck if I know the specifics.” It smiles. “I mean, buck up, though. You’ll be fine. And what’s more, you _know_ you’ll be fine. Usually, I just kind of blink out for a while when things are going good for you, but here I am talking about leaving for a bit, being all genteel and shit. You’ve got your stuff together. For now, anyway. Hard to say, beyond that.”

Jake nods, slowly. He looks down at Dirk, and raises a hand to brush fine hairs from his face. He’s warm and solid and entirely in the realm of the physical. No brain ghosts or wishful thinking, here. Dirk came after him, Dirk wants to be here, and there are a whole lot of others just like him, and maybe he can get himself all in order enough to actually make it all work.

So, yeah. Maybe he will be fine.

But…

He looks up.

“But what about you?” he asks.

The ghost blinks. “What about me?” it repeats slowly, as if it had never heard those words in that order before.

“Are _you_ going to be fine, Brain Ghost Dirk? Blinking out of existence or whatnot and just being nothing until I have another crisis and ring a little bell and get you shaking it on back to semi-realness? Is that all gonna be copacetic?”

Brain Ghost Dirk holds up its hands and kind of just stares at them for a second. It turns then over, holds them to the side, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing. Finally, it shakes like a dog climbing out of a creek and makes eye contact once again. “Huh,” he says. “Not sure. I’ll have to think about that, maybe. Am I going to be fine? Good question. I’ll, um… keep you updated, I guess.”

Jake breathes a little sigh of relief. Somehow, the answer makes him feel a whole lot better. He pushes aside a whole list of awkward and confusing questions about how it is that the ghost can look kind of surprised or why it wouldn’t be thinking about this if _he_ is, and… yeah. He doesn’t really want to think too hard about it, and he’s not sure that the ghost really wants the third degree, either.

Instead, he nestles himself into the curve between Dirk’s shoulder and neck, pressing his face against the jutting bones beneath his skin and muscle.

“Ah, hell. One last insight for the road. He’s awake, you know,” the ghost says.

Jake jerks back up. “What, really?” he demands.

“Yeah. Bad sleeper, that one, but he likes faking it when you’re curled up like that. Lets him just luxuriate in you wrapping around him like a burrito and at least _pretend_ to turn his fucking brain off for fifteen goddamn minutes.” It grimaces. “I can dip maybe one toe into the ocean of _his_ bullshit brain, and let me tell you, even that much is _too_ much. You’ve got your hands full, there. He’s as fucked up as you are, dude.”

“Yeah,” Jake breathes, and then unwinds one arm from Dirk’s supine form to sharpen it into a pointed finger and jab the big old faker right in the sternum. “Knock it off, you dastardly rapscallion! Didn’t anyone ever tell you only hooligans eavesdrop?”

Dirk makes a sputtering sound and his eyes pop open.

Unbelievable!

“Yeah,” he groans, reaching up to rub where Jake poked him, infuriatingly awake. “Sorry about that. That’s the thing with us self-reared ocean children, we’re all dastardly hooligans, or whatever.”

But despite the flippant tone, Jake can see a wash of colour in Dirk’s cheeks, making his freckles stand up and blotching up his complexion. Well, good, then.

Good.

Jake looks down at him. He softens his pointed finger and uses it and all its mates to gently stroke Dirk’s cheek, an echo of the ghost’s motion. Dirk’s eyes go wide, and then slide shut.

“I do want to,” Jake murmurs.

“Hm?”

“You were babbling on and on and fucking on right before we finally got down to business, back there. Do I wanna give it another shot, are we still together, is it worth trying again, should we be boyfriends -- the answer to the whole lot of us is, well, yeah, sure, definitely, obviously.”

“Oh,” Dirk breathes.

“It’s just _easier_ ,” Jake continues, feeling his own face heat, “to talk, you know… with my actions? I’m real namby-pamby when it comes to words, you know. They all come out wrong and I say the wrong thing and then -- and then _you_ get my bull frigging shit boners -- the verbal kind of boner!” he corrects firmly as Dirk shakes his head long-sufferingly. “You get that balderdash tomfoolery knocking around inside your skull and in no time at all you’re acting all seven-thirty about it and --”

He sees something on Dirk’s face and subsides. Right. Maybe this isn’t the best time to go over all the ways that they fucked things up.

“Sorry,” Dirk murmurs.

“I don’t want sorry,” Jake protests. “Just -- just for you to get it. Right? When you’re running on and on and _on_ with all your doubts and, and all that, sometimes I just want to grab you and kiss you so you _get_ it.”

“So I get that you want me to shut up.”

“So you get that I friggin’ flippin’ _like_ you, Dirk Strider, a whole bucketload at that, and just because I don’t always want to be with you chattering on about our feelings doesn’t mean otherwise!”

Dirk most definitely colours again, darkening in the inexplicably well-it void.

“Oh,” he says.

He doesn’t say anything else for a while. Jake considers that something of a victory, and happily curls back around him.

“Okay,” Dirk says, finally. “Okay, I think I get that, maybe. Mostly. Yeah. _But_ , look, on the flipside or whatever, here’s _my_ shit. I am always gonna be a neurotic fuck, dude. I’m always going to be the guy who loses his shit at four in the morning cause I got thinking just a little too hard. I’m always going to be the guy who sends you needy goddamn texts and then has a full on panic attack when you don’t reply. And when I start doing that shit, I need _you_ to get that it’s -- not actually you, okay? It’s just my shit, okay?”

Jake thinks about that.

He thinks about his phone lighting up with a bevvy of messages, thinks about finding Dirk awake in the middle of the night, thinks about when Dirk is so tense that his smiles don’t reach his eyes.

And about himself, running away, holding back, spending too long in the bathroom, making excuses…

And of Brain Ghost Dirk.

_Please just talk to him._

He cranes his neck, focusing on the space where -- he thinks -- the ghost was floating. It’s empty.

Scrunches up his face.

Sighs.

“Well,” he says. “Can I tell you you’re driving me right around the bend when I catch you doing that shit?”

“Dude, if you accompany it with more of those angry-sounding, authoritative declarations of affection, you can tell me I have the personality _and_ looks of Freddy fucking Krueger,” Dirk says with the kind of levity that is most definitely faked, used as a cloak to hide something a whole lot heavier.

Jake can’t help but sigh happily. “Gosh,” he says. “I love Nightmare on Elm Street.”

“I know.”

“But you’re no Freddy Krueger, Dirk Strider,” he makes sure to clarify, because there’ll be none of that. If Dirk needs to hear nice things every so often, then he can comply! “You’re cut from an entirely different sort of cloth! Much more of a sort of Jim Stark, Legolas.. Neo...Jack Dawson… Westley…”

“Please stop naming people from bad movies.”

“Bad!” Jake sputters, kicking off and away. “I thought you liked Princess Bride!”

“I think Princess Bride is _pretty good_ , okay, I did _not_ say ‘like.’”

Jake plants hands on his hips, legs spread like he’s standing his ground. “And who doesn’t like Rebel Without A Cause?”

“Hey,” Dirk says, and his tone is _so_ different Jake immediately shifts back into a loose pose and drifts closer, peering into his face. “I heard you talking, you know. I _was_ awake, like we’ve established.”

“Yeah,” Jake says, and then, realization dawning, claps his hands over his own mouth. “Oh, fiddle fucks!” His voice is muffled. “Look, Strider, we usually don’t just jaw on about your _dick_ , you know! That’s not a common topic of conversation, or anything!”

Dirk winces. “Right, let’s pretend I didn’t hear that part and read seventeen different pathetic worst case scenarios into --”

“Oh, no you don’t! Stop that right now, let me assure you, here, Dirk, your one-eyed monster really is peachy fucking _keen_ and I don’t have a single complaint in any --”

“Jesus, _please_ stop!”

Dirk looks so adorably, bashfully embarrassed that Jake can’t help but laugh and dart towards him, gathering him up into a tight, twining embrace that Dirk feebly tries to struggle out of before sighing and saying, quietly, “I just want to know… fuck, dude. What the fuck _is_ it?”

Jake looks around.

There’s no sign of him. It. Brain Ghost Dirk. He tries, for just a moment, _really_ tries to believe that he’s watching them silently, that he’s going to fade into existence at any second and explain all of this to Dirk, but after a long period where the only sound and sight is the background hum of an infant universe, Jake has to admit that the damn thing wasn’t lying.

For now, at least, it’s gone.

“I don’t exactly get it,” he admits. “I wish he were here to give one of his clever little explanations. Much like you, he can be a pretty good talker when he’s gung ho for it! But as far as I can crab the whole kit and caboodle, he kind of seems like, um, like a Strider-English byproduct?”

Dirk’s eyebrows go into his hair. “What?”

“You know, like…” Jake lets him go and floats back a little. He swallows. His mouth still tastes like Dirk, and he definitely likes that. The thought makes him a little warm for more reasons than just embarrassment. “Like, the two of us come together -- not _come_ together, just, er, you know, join up! Not even physically, because like I said, he’s been around since before that. But your stuff, the Heart stuff, you know? It kind of hooks up with _my_ stuff, and then… there’s a ghost. A brain ghost.”

Dirk shakes his head. He looks kind of bemused. “And you don’t even know how long the damn thing has been skulking about.”

Jake shrugs. “Sorry.”

“It looks like me?”

“Well, yes! In a way, it -- he -- oh, whatever, _I_ never know what to do about it, myself, you know! Just like I have no idea what to do with you, sometimes! Because it _is_ you, in a whole lot of ways!” But it isn’t, not exactly, not quite. Isn’t that what they’d just established? So Jake shrugs again, more expansively. “And in a whole lot of ways, it’s more like me? And then in others, it’s… maybe both? Maybe neither. It’s a hell of a thing, Dirk. I didn’t make it, not on purpose, not any more than you did.”

A flicker of very real pain crosses Dirk’s face, but before Jake can get his hackles up and launch into a frustrated reminder that he _really_ wants to be Dirk’s boyfriend and also he’s not -- well, not _exactly_ interested in the ghost, really, despite all kissing and grinding to the contrary, and…

Before, yes, all of _that_ can crystalize into something verbal and potentially very dangerous, Dirk breathes out a stream of air from pursed lips and shakes his head.

“Right,” he says. “That’s… gonna have to be enough for now, isn’t it? You have a brain ghost that looks like me and maybe kind of _is_ me that we accidentally created with our godlike superpowers at some point… I can live with that. I think.”

“It _is_ a real hell of a thing, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, you can definitely say that. But…” Dirk crosses his arms, looks down, and seems to notice he’s still naked from their previous exertions. Immediately, he’s dressed back up in god tier mulberry, white tights, and poofy little pants.

Jake grins.

“You should put something on,” Dirk mutters, shoving hands into pockets.

“Nope, I’m all jake, here.”

“I know that’s one of your more confusing turns of esoteric phrase, but it’s _extremely_ apt right now --”

Jake floats closer and reaches out, pulling Dirk close once again, and this time, Dirk doesn’t even put up a token resistance. Jake buries his face in orange hair, breathes deep, and sighs happily.

“I really didn’t want to be broken up,” he says quietly, voice muffled by Dirk’s hair. “And I really didn’t actually want to be out here, either. Jeezy, Dirk, this is some stupid, isn’t it? Some darned fucking stupid. What a dunderhead I am. I was just so miserable, you know?”

“I don’t know,” Dirk responds, and the rumble of his voice is wonderful against Jake’s throat. “New Earth isn’t too hot right now, either. You may be onto something with the whole cosmic tourism shit. But that might have something to do with how miserable _I_ was, so…”

“So…” Jake repeats. He puts a kiss in Dirk’s hair. “So, maybe we should… go back? Together-like? And give it, you know, another shot, with maybe a little less misery? I always did want to see the super rad Waterworld apocalypse you were living in. You can give me the tour.”

“Yeah, not much of one of those,” Dirk murmurs. “But… not the worst idea I’ve ever heard, either.”

Jake pulls away and tugs at Dirk’s wrist, headed back in the direction he _knows_ Jade’s new sun is. The second he thinks about it, it pulls at him like magnetic north, the atoms in his body attuned to the ones in its burning core.

“Sweet mercy,” he breathes. “We really are gods, now, aren’t we?”

“Fuckin’... apparently,” Dirk replies, and then sighs. “Let me be the first to say: I weep for the life we create.”

And maybe that was prophetic and apt and they’d do a terrible friggin job of it.

But… there was always a chance that they’d be a bit better than all that. Wasn’t there?

Jake tugs Dirk forward hard, and, while Dirk sputters and vacuum pulls him forward, Jake grabs him and pulls him in close, holding him like a groom holds a bride.

“Oh, no,” Dirk says. “Fuck, no. No way.”

But he doesn’t struggle. If anything, he settles happily against Jake’s chest.

Jake spares a glance behind him into the void where they’d been, hoping for a shimmering silhouette, at least. But there’s nothing there, and maybe, for now, that’s a good sign.

*

_It is said that the gods slept for a thousand years, and as they slept, they dreamed._

__

__

_Deep in the temples upon their moons, they rested from the labour of creation. The Twin Knights built an edifice of iron, blood, and fire, and rested wrapped up in one another, dreaming of passion and restraint. The Moon Sylph and Sun Seer laid in a bower of roses, pillowed upon one another’s breast, the First Egg protected between their bodies. The Goddess of Souls and her mother, the Aureate Maiden, slept at the centre of the Forge, gestating life and energy. The Trickster, The Thief, and the Little Muse were cradled by wind and shade, and their fancies became all the mischief of the world._

__

__

_The Endless Seeker did not sleep, but vanished into the unknown, in search of the Lost One._

__

__

_And then there were the Prince of Hearts and his Hope._

__

__

_It is said that the Prince of Hearts never rested with his fellows, but spent a thousand years searching the cosmos for Hope. He was driven by need, for life could never flourish without the greatest of all virtues, but he was also driven by love. He searched every corner of existence, through colour and cloud, through newborn suns and collapsing black holes, through great balls of gas and terrestrial rock and swirling oceans._

__

__

_And in the end, the Prince of Hearts found Hope, and confessed his love, and Hope returned home with him._

__

__

_It is said that the moment the gods felt Hope again in their presence, their dreaming was complete, and they woke._

__

__

*

“Really not sure this is gonna work.”.

“You mustn’t doubt yourself!” Callie insists, pushing against Dave’s side and gazing up at him with her guileless, massive eyes. “That won’t help at all! You have to have confidence, Dave! Be strong!”

“Right,” Dave winces, looking down at the earth below.

It really is _exactly_ like Waterworld.

“Don’t get distracted thinking this is like Waterworld,” Dirk mutters at Jake’s ear.

“I’m not!” Jake hisses.

“Good, because you’re supposed to be helping this shit by believing it’s the normal fucking earth, remember.”

“Please, Father,” Rose says from somewhere above them both. “I think he’s been reminded often enough.”

“I believe that was supposed to be a private conversation, Rose,” Kanaya chimes in, all innocence.

“Yes, I do believe so.”

“ _Oh_.”

Dirk grumbles.

Jake shuts his eyes, trying to block out all the voices. It’s distracting, and if he’s going to do this, he needs to _focus_. But no matter how hard he tries, he just keeps thinking about all the friggin’ water and how far the blue ball is from the planet he grew up on and the image of it just floats further away.

Dirk slips a hand into his.

It’s just a light little touch. A reminder that he’s there. Nothing pressing, nothing demanding.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Don’t think so hard, yeah? Just think about your grandma, your orb, and your island.”

Jake takes a deep breath. Remembers long, lonely days, wishing he had people to share life with, and colourful text on a screen.

Nods.

“Alright,” Dave says. “Okay. Here goes nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all.
> 
> I conceived this fic for Dirkjake week _last year_ , with the idea that I'd post a seven chapter fic with one update a day. Obviously, that did not happen. Life happened, other fics happened, and also I am just terminally unmotivated. But I'm really excited that I did get through the whole thing and finished it off. Thanks so much for supporting me throughout this lowkey nightmare it took me way too long to make, damn.
> 
> Check out the rest of my fics! I write mostly Dirkjake and Davekat, though I have a big Rosemary fic planned at some point, too. You can also follow me on tumblr @ [my dumb url](http://purplepurpleunicornsparkle.tumblr.com).


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